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GREEK   LITERATURE 


COLUMBIA 

UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

SALES  AGENTS 

NEW   YORK: 

LEMCKE  &  BUECHNER 

SO-3'2   West  2Tth  Street 

LONDON : 

HENRY  FROWDE 

Amen  Corner,  E.G. 

TORONTO: 

HENRY  FROMT)E 

26  Richmond  St.,  W. 


GREEK    LITERATURE 


A   SEEIES   OF  LECTURES 


DELIVERED    AT 


COLUMBIA   UNIVERSITY 


>        >     '    .    >     J      J      J  »  '  )      >  J  *  .     o  ,  , 


»      >      » 


Weill  \notk 

THE   COLUMBIA   UNIVERSITY   PRESS 

1912 

All  rif/hts  reserved 


f 


COPTKIGIIT,    1912, 

By  the  COLUMBIA   UNIVERSITY   PRESS. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  March,  1912. 


•  •   • « • 


NortoooC  ^Tcss 

J.  S.  Gushing  Co.  —  liciwick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


PREFATORY   NOTE 

The  lectures  printed  in  this  volume  were  given  at  the  sug- 
gestion of  President  Butler,  under  the  auspices  of  the  Depart- 
ment of  Classical  Philology,  in  the  spring  of  1911.  It  was 
the  purpose  of  the  Department,  as  set  forth  in  the  first 
announcement  of  the  lectures,  that  they  should  have  special 
reference  to  the  universality  and  permanent  power  of  Greek 
Literature.  This  idea,  therefore,  has  been  made  prominent 
throughout,  though  more  emphasis  is  laid  upon  it  in  some  lec- 
tures than  in  others,  according  as  the  subject  matter  or  the 
bent  of  tlie  lecturer  made  such  emphasis  natural. 

In  a  series  of  lectures  written  by  different  people,  who  in 
many  cases  had  not  been  able  to  consult  one  another,  some 
lack  of  unity  is  to  be  expected.  This  is  not,  we  hope,  suffi- 
ciently marked  to  prevent  the  volume  from  being  of  use  and 
interest  both  to  students  and  to  the  general  reader. 

The  Department  of  Classical  Philology  would  express  its 
sincere  thanks  to   the    scholars  from  other  universities  who 

have  so  cordially  lent  their  aid. 

J.   R.    WHEELER, 
E.    D.    PERRY, 
GONZALEZ   LODGE, 
Committee  of  the  Department. 


CONTENTS 


PACE 


The  Study  of  Greek  Literatcre  ......         1 

Paul  Shorey,  The  University  of  Chicago. 

^  Epic  Poetry      .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .       '  ,         .         .34 

Herbert  Weir  Smyth,  Harvard  University. 

Lyric  Poetry 58 

Edvpard  Delavan  Perry,  Cokimbia  University. 

^   Tragedy 02 

J.  R.  Wheeler,  Columbia  University. 

Comedy      .         .....         ......     124 

Edward  Capps,  Princeton  University. 

History 152 

Bernadotte  Perrin,  Yale  University. 

V  Oratory 178 

Charles  Forster  Smith,  The  University  of  Wisconsin. 

Philosophy 200 

Frederick  J.  E.  Woodbridge,  Columbia  University. 

Hellenistic  Literature  ........     229 

Henry  W.  Prescott,  The  University  of  Chicago. 

Greek  Influence  on  Roman  Literature 267 

Gonzalez  Lodge,  Columbia  University. 


VII 


THE  STUDY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE 

Professor  IMahaffy  for  many  years  made  it  his  mission  to 
broaden  the  narrow  Hellenism  of  the  universities  by  empha- 
sizing the  significance  of  authors  and  subjects  beyond  the 
classical  pale.  Perhaps  it  is  time  to  remind  ourselves  that 
the  illumination  of  these  satellite  studies  is  after  all  a  re- 
flected glory  from  the  central  sun. 

The  Iliad  and  Odyssey  once  stood  in  splendid  isolation  at 
the  entrance  to  Greek  literature,  like  the  twin  lions  at  the 
gateway  of  the  Mycenaean  citadel.  But  now  we  approach 
them  through  a  long  vista  of  Minoan  1,  Minoan  2,  Minoan  3, 
and  with  attention  already  fagged  by  the  higher  Homeric 
criticism  and  minds  befuddled  with  speculative  anthropology 
and  craniological  statistics.  Bestowing  a  perfunctory  glance 
upon  the  stately  beauty  of  the  Propylaea,  we  press  within  to 
ransack  the  tombs  for  shreds  and  fragments  with  which  to 
patch  our  philological  restorations.  Science  of  mythology, 
science  of  religion,  science  of  language,  Homeric  criticism, 
palaeography,  epigraphy,  papyrology  —  endless  are  the 
subsidiary  disciplines  which  we  have  elaborated  for  the  inter- 
pretation of  Greek  literature.  But  the  thought,  the  imagi- 
nation, the  diction,  of  the  authors  we  take  for  granted  —  a 
little  weary,  perhaps,  of  hearing  Aristides  called  "  the  just," 
Aeschylus  "the  sublime,"  Sophocles  "the  perfect,"  Plato 
"the  divine,"  Demosthenes  "the  eloquent."  And  if  we 
extend  the  purview  beyond  Demosthenes  and  Aristotle,  the 
range  of  the  studies  accessory  to  classical  Greek  literature  is 
still  more  appalling.  The  fragments  of  the  Alexandrians  are 
collected  and  reconstructed,   the  secondary  Greek   writers 

1 


2  GREEK  LITERATURE 

of  the  Roman  empire  are  minutely  analyzed  and  traced  back 
to  their  sources  in  lost  Alexandrian  models ;  the  Greek 
administration  of  Egypt  is  scrutinized  down  to  the  last  tax 
receipt ;  the  Byzantine  empire  is  rehabilitated,  and  the 
endless  waste  of  Byzantine  literature  surveyed  and  regis- 
tered in  special  Zeitschrifien,  and  the  long  history  of  the 
KoivT^  is  followed  till  it  reemerges  from  the  Turkish  kata- 
bothron  as  the  KaOapemvaa  of  to-day.  What  Athenian  tour- 
ist who  possesses  a  smattering  of  Greek  is  not  thrilled  by 
the  thought  that  the  words  which  he  overhears  in  an  Athenian 
street  may  be  the  words  which  three  thousand  years  ago  made 
music  on  the  lips  of  Odysseus  and  Nausicaa?  Who  that 
turns  the  pages  of  the  Palatine  Anthology  is  not  moved  to 
read  side  by  side  with  epigrams  that  elate  from  Marathon 
and  Salamis  verses  that  were  almost  contemporaneous  with 
Cressy  and  Poitiers?  What  student  of  any  part  of  this, 
the  longest  and  noblest  unbroken  literary  tradition  in  the 
world,  is  not  sustained  and  inspired  by  the  consciousness  of 
its  relation  to  the  glorious  whole  ?  And  yet  there  would  be 
some  loss  in  this  enlargement  of  our  horizon,  if  it  led  us  to 
forget  that  all  that  differentiates  Hellenic  Philology  from 
Sinology,  Aegyptology,  Assyriology,  or  the  archaeology  of  the 
American  Indian,  is  the  supreme  beauty  and  significance  of  a 
few  poets  and  orators  and  thinkers  who  can  be  counted  on  the 
fingers  of  the  two  hands  and  who,  if  we  except  Homer,  lived 
within  two  or  three  centuries.  It  is  the  originality,  the  stim- 
ulating power,  the  indefectible  charm  of  classic  Greek  liter- 
ature, that  vitalizes  all  these  erudite  accretions  of  philology 
and  archaeology  and  post-classical  literature  and  history  that 
have  associated  themselves  with  it  in  our  class  rooms. 

The  world  of  scholarship  is  large  enough  to  maintain  every 
type  of  specialist.  But  the  student  of  humane  letters  must 
be  on  his  guard  against  the  specialist's  distorted  perspective. 
If  Greek  literature  is  to  exercise  its  power  of  redemption  upon 
us  and  retain  any  significance  for  our  hurried  and  distracted 


THE  STUDY  3 

culture,  we  must  acquiesce  in  the  miracle  that  it  begins  with 
the  muse  of  Homer,  born  full-panoplied  of  the  brain  and  poetic 
genius  of  early  Hellas.  It  is  clear  that  the  Homeric  Pan- 
theon, the  legends,  the  tale  of  Troy,  the  similes,  the  epithets, 
the  perfected  harmonies  of  the  hexameter,  imply  a  long  pre- 
historic or  embryonic  evolution.  "Ages  of  heroes  fought  and 
fell  that  Homer  in  the  end  might  tell,"  and  generations  of 
singers  must  have  left  the  vibration  of  their  souls  in  the 
timbre  of  the  Homeric  lyre.    But  as  Wordsworth  warns  us : — 

No  tongue  is  able  to  rehearse 
One  measure,  Orpheus,  of  thy  verse. 
Musaeus,  stationed  with  his  lyre 
Supreme  among  the  Olympian  quire, 
Is  for  the  dwellers  upon  earth 
Mute  as  a  lark  ere  morning's  birth. 

Prehomeric  bards  and  prehomeric  ethnology  are  irretriev- 
ably buried  in  the  dark  backward  and  abysm  of  time,  and 
excessive  preoccupation  with  the  pseudo-sciences  that  seek 
to  reconstruct  them  on  insufficient  evidence  will  merely 
distort  our  image  of  Homer  in  a  false  focus.  Homer  was  an 
end  as  well  as  a  beginning,  but  for  us  he  is  only  a  beginning. 
Starting  from  Homer,  we  may  understand,  if  not  explain,  the 
supremacy  of  Greek  literature.  Homer  himself  we  cannot 
explain ;  but  if  we  abandon  ourselves  to  him  we  shall  under- 
stand him  better  than  those  who  try  to  explain  him. 

Macaulay's  explanation  was  that  Homer  is  the  childhood 
of  humanity,  and  that  childhood  is  more  poetic  than  maturity 
because  it  really  Ijelieves  in  Little  Red  Riding  Hood  and  the 
Wolf,  while  we  can  only  strive  to  make  believe.  But  Homer 
is  no  more  a  child  than  he  is  a  savage.  Homeric  poetry 
expresses  not  the  childhood  of  humanity,  but  that  heroic  and 
poetic  adolescence  of  the  Greek  race,  when  the  brave  new 
world  was  full  of  strange  people  and  curious  things,  when 
infinite  horizons  lured  to  heroic  adventures  on  mysterious 


4  GREEK   LITERATURE 

seas,  when  it  was  worth  while  to  die  for  a  beautiful  face  or  to 
avenge  a  friend,  when  passionate  feeling  and  poetic  sensibility 
still  predominated  over  the  lucidity,  the  power  of  abstraction 
and  generalization  and  analysis,  and  the  rhetorical  fluency 
that  were  to  prove  the  distinguishing  and  abiding  endowment 
of  the  race. 

For  though  the  Greeks  produced  in  Homer,  Sappho,  Pin- 
dar, and  Aeschylus  four  of  the  world's  supreme  poets,  the 
romantic  imagination,  the  poetic  intoxication  of  a  Marlowe, 
Shakespeare,  Shelley,  and  Keats  is  not,  on  a  survey  of  their 
whole  history,  their  dominant  quality. 

Without  unduly  pressing  the  comparison,  we  may  conceive 
the  Greek  genius,  as  Coleridge  portrays  himself  in  the  Ode 
to  Dejection,  divided  between  the  two  impulses  of  poetic 
creation  and  reflective  analysis,  and  gradually  allowing  the 
first  to  be  swallowed  up  in  the  second.  When  we  pass  from 
Pindar  to  Simonides,  from  Aeschylus  to  Sophocles,  we  have 
already  crossed  the  line  which  divides  the  highest  imagina- 
tive poetry  from  the  poetry  of  finished  and  perfect  art.  In 
passing  from  Sophocles  to  Euripides,  we  enter  the  world  of 
self-conscious  reflection  and  sophisticated  rhetoric,  a  rhetoric 
illumined  with  many  an  exquisite  gleam  of  romance,  but  still 
the  dialectical  rhetoric  on  which  the  Greek  nation  has  lived 
for  two  thousand  years.  The  muse  of  poetry  had  fled  before 
her  sister  philosophy,  never  to  return.  Reflection  and  analy- 
sis are  the  source  of  many  of  the  greatest  achievements  of  the 
Greek  mind,  but  the  Greek  genius  might  well  have  apostro- 
phized this  all-absorbing  divinity  as  Coleridge  did:  — 

But  oh  !  each  visitation 

Suspends  what  nature  gave  me  at  my  birth, 

My  shaping  spirit  of  Imagination. 


Till  that  which  suits  a  part  infects  the  whole, 
And  now  is  almost  grown  the  habit  of  my  soul. 


I 


THE  STUDY  5 

I  am  far  from  deploring  this  inevitable  evolution,  as  is  done 
by  Nietzsche  and  Landor,  who  fiercely  denounce  Socrates 
and  Plato  and  all  their  works,  and  maintain  that  the  only  true 
Greece  is  that  younger  Hellas  to  which  Pindar  and  Herodotus 
wistfully  looked  back :  — 

Before  the  sophist  brood  had  overlaid 

The  last  spark  of  man's  consciousness  with  words. 

If  Socrates  and  Plato  and  Aristotle  could  come  only  through 
the  sacrifice  of  the  gift  of  creative  poetic  imagination,  the 
price  was  well  paid.     The  Latin  and  German  races  might 
have  produced   an   indigenous  poetry  of  their  own.     But 
though,  as  Mill  says,  philosophy  is  abundantly  amenable  to 
general  causes,  it  is  probable  that  but  for  Socrates,  Plato,  and 
Aristotle  and  what  they  represent,  our  European  world  would 
never  have  developed  either  logic,  philosophy,  or  science. 
As  it  is,  we  have  the  philosophy  and  the  poetry  too,  for  the 
poetry  produced  by  the  Greek  race  before  abstraction  dimmed 
imagination  and  analysis  confused  the  instinctive  sense  of 
beauty  is  not  a  few  Coleridgean  fragments.     It  is  the  one 
great  body  of  poetry  in  the  world  that  equally  satisfies  the 
imagination  and  the  reason,  in  which  form  and  content  are 
perfectly  balanced  and  harmonized ;    the  one  poetry  that 
realizes  Plotinus's  definition  of  beauty  —  the  irradiation  of 
the  particular  by  the  universal ;  in  short,  the  one  poetr}^  that 
is  classic  in  the  true  sense  of  that  much  misapprehended  word. 
Yet  the  first  quality  that  attracts  a  modern  reader  in  Homer 
is  a  certain  fiery  speed  and  divine  intensity,  differing  from  the 
bitter  concentrated  passion  of  Dante,  l)ut  equally  grateful 
to  the  soul's  innate  longing  for  emotional  expansion.     This 
is  the  energeia  celebrated  by  Aristotle.     This  is  the  Homeric 
fire  so  eloquently  praised  by  Pope  of  all  persons,  and  more 
recently  by  Professor  Mackail.     This  is  the  spirit  Elysian 
that  did  fill  the  bosom  of  Chapman  with  such  a  flood  of  soul 
as  swept  Keats's  little  sonnet  bark  out  upon  the  ocean  of 


6  GREEK  LITERATURE 

poesie.  This  is  old  Homer's  sting  that  "stirs  the  sluggish 
pulse  like  wine."  It  is  the  supralunar  intoxication  of  song 
which  the  Neoplatonists,  in  the  endeavor  to  defend  Homer 
against  Plato's  censure,  distinguish  from  the  infralunar  in- 
ebriety of  sense.  "Since  I  read  that  book,"  said  an  old 
French  critic,  "men  are  fifteen  feet  high  and  I  cannot  sleep." 
Unless  Homer  affects  you  in  that  way,  you  have  not  read  him. 
He  can  hardly  affect  you  so  in  a  lecturer's  quotations.  You 
must  reread  for  yourselves  the  great  tonic  passages.  But 
as  a  faint  indication  of  my  meaning  I  will  quote  two  illustra- 
tions of  the  delight  of  battle  which  the  Tennysonian  Ulysses 
had  drunk  with  his  peers  far  on  the  ringing  plains  of  windy 
Troy.     The  first  in  Chapman's  translation  {II.  13.  72):  — 

This  Telamonius  thus  received,  so  too  my  heart,  my  hands 
Burn  with  desire  to  toss  my  lance,  each  foot  beneath  me  stands 
Bare  on  bright  fire  to  use  his  speed,  my  heart  is  raised  so  high, 
That  to  encounter  Hector's  self  I  long  insatiately. 

The  other,  Ajax's  defiance  to  Hector,  no  translation  can  repro- 
duce.    A  close  version  runs  :  — 

But  for  thee  thyself  I  declare  that  the  hour  draws  nigh  when  in  thy 
flight,  thou  shall  lift  thy  hands  in  prayer  to  Zeus  and  all  the  immortal 
Gods,  that  swifter  than  hawks  may  be  the  f ull-maned  steeds  that  shall 
sweep  thee  back  to  Ilion  in  a  whirlwind  of  dust  o'er  the  plain  :  — 

o"ot  8  avT<S  (ftyjixl  crx^^ov  1/XyU.evat,  oTTTrore  <f>evy<DV 
aprjcrrj  Ait  iraTpl  Koi  aAAot?  aduvaTOtcTLV 
6d(T<xova<;  iprjKOiV  tfxtvai  KaXXcTpLxa<;  Xttttov^, 

O?  CTC  TToAlvS'  oldOVai   KOVLOVT€<i  TTeStOtO. 

In  all  this  we  are,  as  Matthew  Arnold  would  say,  praising 
Homer  too  much  like  barbarians  and  assimilating  him  to  the 
eighteenth-century  conception  of  Ossianic  "poetic  rage." 
For  the  Greek  poet  in  the  very  torrent,  tempest,  and  whirl- 
wind of  passion  preserves  the  temperance,  the  a-uxfypoa-vvrjj 
the  lucidity,  the  measure,  and  the  sweet  reasonableness  of 
the  classic  ideal.     He  does  not  seek  to  gild  refined  gold  or 


THE  STUDY  7 

paint  the  lily,  or  pluck  the  wdngs  from  painted  butterflies 
to  fan  the  moonbeams  from  his  sleeping  eyes;  he  does  not 
conjure  the  wandering  stars  and  pile  up  hyperbole  to  make 
Ossa  hke  a  wart ;  he  does  not,  except  in  Aristophanes,  whom 
the  romanticist  Heine  therefore  admires  above  all  the  Greek 
poets,  he  does  not  try  to  "come  up  through  the  lair  of  the 
lion  with  love  in  his  luminous  eyes,"  or  "ride  with  the  reck- 
less seraphim  on  the  rim  of  a  red-maned  star."  "Homer  and 
Pindar,"  says  Landor,  "Homer  and  Pindar  soar,  but  keep  their 
feet  on  the  ground  "  —  a  difficult  feat  for  a  literal  imagina- 
tion to  conceive,  but  Landor's  meaning  is  clear. 

The  Greek  schohasts  discovered  all  the  arts  and  sciences  in 
Homer,  though  Swift  protested  that  he  had  searched  the 
Iliad  in  vain  for  an  adequate  account  of  the  spleen.  We  at 
least  may  find  there  all  the  essential  qualities  of  classic  art, 
and  something  more  than  the  embryonic  prefigurement  of 
the  later  forms  of  Greek  literature.  Plato  and  Aristotle  were 
more  nearly  right  in  caUing  Homer  the  originator  of  the  drama 
than  are  the  modern  scholiasts  who  learnedly  deduce  it  from 
the  dithyramb  or  the  funeral  chant.  You  have  only,  as  Plato 
says,  to  omit  the  descriptions  between  the  speeches,  and  the 
drama  is  in  substance  constituted.  The  interfused  passion  and 
dialectic  of  the  Oration  on  the  Crown  is  already  present  in 
Achilles's  reply  to  Agamemnon's  embassy,  which  Gladstone 
pronounced  the  finest  speech  in  the  world.  And  a  slight 
measure  of  the  ingenuity  with  which  the  philological  world  of 
to-day  is  oversupplied  would  deduce  from  Homer  lyric,  elegy, 
gnomic  verse,  and  choral  hymn,  and  find  in  him  perhaps  even 
the  suggestipns  of  epigram,  satire,  and  comedy.  There  is  no 
lovelier  small,  sweet  idyl  in  Theocritus  or  Tennyson  than  the 
vision  that  illumines  the  horror  of  the  battlefield  for  Hector's 
perturbed  spirit  as  he  awaits  the  onset  of  Achilles's  spear  : — 

No  time  is  here  for  dalliance  and  soft  speech, 
Soft  words  of  dalliance  as  when  youth  and  maid 
Linger  in  sweet  discourse  by  rock  or  tree. 


8  GREEK  LITERATURE 

These  lines  were  greatly  admired  by  the  ancients,  though 
scholiasts  anticipated  the  Germans,  who  athetize  them  on 
the  ground  that  "the  moment  is  not  suitable  for  such  arti- 
ficial flowers  of  speech."  Such  critics  should  study,  in  Tolstoi's 
War  and  Peace,  the  psychology  of  the  battle  soliloquy  which, 
it  appears,  was  not  unknown  to  Homer.  Mr.  Walter  Leaf 
argues  that  the  mention  of  rock  and  tree  must  be  an  allusion 
to  a  primitive  fable  in  which  a  rock  and  a  tree  hold  debate. 
For,  says  he,  to  suppose  the  rock  and  tree  a  background  to 
the  scene  of  love-making  is  not  "  epic  or  even  Greek."  How- 
ever it  may  be  with  the  scholar  in  politics,  the  ''merely 
philological"  interpretation  of  literature  is  a  spectacle  to 
rejoice  the  comic  spirit.  Even  Coleridge  chose  to  ignore 
the  fact  that  the  parting  of  Hector  and  Andromache 
is  an  idyl  and  a  genre  picture,  and  doubts  the  Homeric  gen- 
uineness of  Andromache  "smiling  through  her  tears"  — 
SaKpvoev  yeXdcraaa.  It  seems  to  him  more  like  the  prettiness 
of  Bion  and  Moschus.  So  Macaulay's  New  Zealander 
will  doubt  the  Shakespearian  genuineness  of  the  same 
universal  human  touch  in  the  tragedy  of  King  Lear,  and 
prove  it  to  be  an  interpolation  from  Tennyson's  idyll 
of  Merlin  and  Vivien,  where  it  is  also  found.  Let  us  once 
for  all  free  our  minds  of  this  false  science  by  affirming 
that  it  is  actually  more  scientific  to  believe  naively  with  the 
ancients  and  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  that  the  universal  genius  of 
Homer  knew  all  heights  and  depths  of  the  human  spirit, 
than  it  is  to  constitute  an  a  priori  type  of  the  stern,  simple, 
primitive  bard  by  the  arbitrary  excision  of  everything  that 
does  not  conform  to  it.  We  do  not  in  the  least  know  that 
Homer  was  a  barbarian,  a  savage,  a  primitive  folk-bard. 
We  only  know  that  he  was  a  supremely  great  Greek  poet ; 
and,  to  return  to  the  main  thread  of  our  discourse,  a  poet  in 
whom  the  fiery  passion  of  the  world's  poetic  youth  is  already 
tempered  and  chastened  by  the  serenity,  the  reasonableness, 
and  the  restraint  of  Greek  art.     In  another  sense  than  that 


THE  STUDY  9 

in  which  Cowley  applied  tlie  words  to  Vergil,  he  "made  that 
art  which  was  a  rage." 

The  Iliad  is  "the  most  important  poetical  monument 
existing."  But  Homer  is  not  the  special  theme  of  this  intro- 
ductory lecture,  and  we  can  only  glance  at  some  of  the  ways 
in  which  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  might  illustrate  the  lucid 
rationality  of  the  Greek  mind.  There  is  first  the  architec- 
tonic structure  of  the  poems.  It  is  easy  for  critics  who  them- 
selves never  constructed  anything  to  pick  fiaws  in  any  plot. 
But  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  remain  the  best-constructed  long 
poems  in  the  world  —  not  only  in  comparison  with  the 
formless  agglomerations  of  the  Sanskrit  epic,  the  loose-strung 
songs  of  the  Edda,  the  patchwork  of  the  Kalewala,  but  in 
comparison  with  the  Aeneid  or  Paradise  Lost,  and  still  more, 
of  course,  in  comparison  with  such  formless  and  aimless  pro- 
ductions as  Shelley's  Revolt  of  Isla?n.  This  architectonic- 
imagiuation,  as  of  a  Platonic  demiourgos,  stamping  form  and 
informing  ideas  on  the  rude  indigest  of  chaos,  reveals  itself 
throughout  Greek  literature  :  in  the  nicely  distributed  sym- 
metry of  Herodotus's  full  but  never  crowded  narrative,  in  the 
incredible  genius  that  swings  each  of  the  great  poetic  strophe- 
blocks  of  the  Fourth  Pythian  Ode  to  more  than  Amphionic 
music  into  its  appointed  place  in  a  structure  that  outlasts 
the  Parthenon;  in  the  still  more  complicated,  but  also  still 
more  strictly  predetermined,  labyrinthine  construction  of 
those  Platonic  dialogues,  where  only  the  naive  fancy  that 
they  are  moving  "whithersoever  the  wind  may  chance  to 
blow";  and  in  the  cunningly-calculated,  apparent  careless- 
ness with  which  Demosthenes  marshals  his  weakest  argu- 
ments in  the  position  least  exposed  to  attack. 

Secondly,  the  Greek  gifts  of  lucidity  and  analysis  manifest 
themselves  in  the  clear  discrimination  and  distinct  portrayal 
of  character  within  the  well-ordered  framework  of  the  nar- 
rative or  plot.  A  German  scholar  has  written  a  book  on  the 
literary  portrait  in  Greek  literature,  studying  chiefly  the  hi.s- 


10  GREEK  LITERATURE 

lories,  the  Platonic  dialogues,  the  orators,  Characters  of  Theo- 
phrastus,  and  the  New  Comedy.  The  Greeks,  of  course,  never 
attempted  or  achieved  the  extreme  refinement  of  modern 
psychological  analysis.  They  rarely  if  ever  trace  the  gradual 
growth  or  deterioration  of  character  in  the  manner  of  George 
Eliot,  or,  like  Tolstoi,  Howells,  and  James,  turn  the  search- 
light of  explicit  soliloquy  on  the  revealing  parole  interieure 
of  half-conscious  reflection,  the  ripples  and  undercurrents  of 
the  stream  of  thought.  They  depicted  character  through 
action,  dramatic  conflict,  and  the  rhetoric  of  appeal  or  self- 
justification,  with  more  broad  distinctness  of  type  and  per- 
haps with  not  less  truth  of  perspective  and  proportion  than 
our  too  curious  scrutiny  sometimes  yields.  Homer's  pres- 
entation of  the  characters  of  Ulysses,  Hector,  Achilles, 
Agamemnon,  Ajax,  Telemachus,  Nestor,  Helen,  Androm- 
ache, Penelope,  and  how  many  others  is  the  greatest  single 
creation  of  peers  ever  accomplished  in  the  exercise  of  the 
poet's  kingly  prerogative.  Fully  to  appreciate  this,  we  should 
need  not  only  to  study  each  type  in  its  lucid  Homeric  out- 
line, but  to  trace  its  after-evolution  from  Homer  to  Soph- 
ocles, from  Sophocles  to  Vergil,  from  Vergil  to  Racine,  from 
Racine  to  Tennyson,  Homer,  as  we  said,  does  not  refine  so 
far  as  the  moderns  do.  But  his  characterizations  are  far 
more  subtly  individualized  than  is  generally  believed.  The 
speeches  of  Achilles,  for  example,  throughout  the  Iliad  are 
marked  by  a  distinctive  psychology,  rhetoric,  nay  syntax, 
of  their  own.  The  consistency  not  only  of  Hector's  type,  but 
of  his  temperament,  is  preserved  throughout.  Coleridge 
would  not  have  found  it  easy  to  redeem  his  engagement 
"to  compil^  twelve  books  with  characters  just  as  distinct 
and  consistent  as  those  in  the  Iliad  from  the  metrical  ballads 
and  other  chronicles  of  England." 

This  intellectualism  which,  from  the  beginning,  controlled 
the  sensibility  and  informed  the  imagination  of  the  Greek, 
we  might,  if  time  allowed,  further  illustrate  by  the  clearly 


THE  STUDY  11 

defined,  human  beauty  of  the  gods  of  the  Homeric  pantheon, 
contrasted  with  the  cloudy  symbolisms  and  theriomorphic 
divinities  of  other  mythologies,  ''pawing  to  get  free  their 
hinder  parts,"  or  again  by  the  Homeric  style,  with  its  clean- 
cut,  plastically  defined  similes,  and  its  swift,  lucid  evolution 
of  the  thought,  which  Arnold  compares  with  Voltaire.  And 
then  it  would  be  the  task  of  a  fuller  exposition  to  trace  the 
history  of  these  qualities  to  their  perfect  balance  with  plastic 
beauty  in  the  pure  classicism  of  Sophocles  and  Phidias,  and 
their  excess  in  the  literature  of  the  decline. 

"It  appears  that  contention  is  not  of  one  kind,  but  two  — 
one,  the  good  emulation,  a  thing  to  be  praised ;  the  other, 
the  evil  strife  of  envy,  a  thing  of  reproach  "  ;  so  begins  Hesiod's 
Works  and  Days.  Is  this  the  primitive  folk-poet,  or  the 
Platonic  Socrates,  pointing  out  in  his  favorite  phrase  that  if 
equivocation  is  not  to  undo  us  we  must  distinguish  Svo  dSrj^ 
two  species?  Montaigne  said,  "disiinguo  is  the  first  word  in 
my  philosophy."  It  was  the  first  and  the  last  word  in  the 
philosophy  of  the  Greeks.  Distinction,  antithesis,  mediation 
and  fluent  coordination,  we  could  follow  them  all  together 
with  the  development  of  abstraction,  in  poetry,  architecture, 
philosophy,  oratory,  and  rhetoric,  till  rhetoric  and  dialectic 
swallowed  all.  Jowett's  essay  on  the  Decline  of  Greek 
Literature,  in  the  introduction  to  his  translation  of  Plato's 
Phaedrus,  contains  some  interesting  observations  on  the 
great  "literary  waste,  or  dead  level,  or  interminable  marsh 
in  which  Greek  literature  was  soon  destined  to  disappear." 
Plato,  whom  Joseph  de  Maistre  detests  as  the  chief  repre- 
sentative of  this  tendency,  Jowett  thinks  foresaw  it  and 
protested  against  its  authors,  the  Sophists.  Thve  history  of 
its  natural  and  perhaps  inevitable  development  from  the 
defects,  or  rather  the  excesses  of  the  qualities,  of  the  Greek 
mind  remains  to  be  written. 

In  this  long  evolution,  Sophocles  represents  the  central 
culminating  moment  of  the  perfect  equilibrium  of  imagina- 


12  GREEK  LITERATURE 

tion  and  art,  plasticity  and  thought ;  and  his  tragedies  are 
the  touchstone  of  our  appreciation  of  the  distinctive  classic 
beauty  which  the  eighteenth  century  confused  with  the 
pseudo-classic,  and  for  which  we  substitute  the  romantic. 
The  mechanical  procedure  of  pseudo-classicism  is  aptly 
characterized  in  Campbell's  description  of  the  method  of  the 
Greek  artist :  — 

When  first  the  Rhodian's  mimic  art  array'd 
The  queen  of  Beauty  in  her  Cj'prian  Shade, 
The  happy  master  mingled  on  his  piece 
Each  look  that  charm'd  him  in  the  fair  of  Greece. 

The  romantic  beauty  is  that  which  thrills  the  modern  reader 
in  Professor  Murray's  transfiguring  translations  of  Euripides, 
which  seem  to  have  been  composed  in  confirmation  of 
Matthew  Arnold's  complaint  that  "the  moderns  will  only 
have  the  antique  on  the  condition  of  making  it  more  beauti- 
ful (according  to  their  own  notions  of  beauty)  than  the 
antique."  ^ 

But  the  true  Hellenic  beauty  is  that  of  Sophocles,  in  whom 
the  artistic  presentment  of  the  essential  spiritual  quality  of 
human  action  and  passion  is  blurred  by  no  touch  of  capricious 
fantasy,  sensational  excess,  inorganic  ornament,  or  distract- 
ing and  disillusionizing  detail.  Sophoclean  tragedy  is  for 
the  drama  what  the  Parthenon  is  for  architecture  and  sculp- 
ture, the  exemplification  of  the  definition  already  glanced  at 
that  beauty  is  the  idea  shining  through  the  individual. 

This  ideal  equilibrium  is  by  the  very  law  of  human  nature 
unstable,  and  the  change,  not  to  use  the  question-begging 
term  "decadence,"  began  with  Euripides.     The  harmony  of 

'  As  the  conclusion  of  this  paper  will  show  {infra,  p.  23),  I  am  grateful  to  the 
poetic  interpreter  who  can  heighten  our  enjoyment  of  the  classics  by  roman- 
tic coloring  and  perhaps  fantastic  associations  and  contrasts  of  modern  feel- 
ing. My  reserves  begin  only  when  Professor  Murray,  speaking  as  a  critic  and 
a  scholar,  argues  from  his  own  translation  of ,  let  us  sa.y,  Bacchae,  876-881, 
997-1011,  or  Polybius,  IV,  31,  or  the  Leipsydrion  Skolion. 


THE  STUDY  13 

form  and  content,  another  definition  of  the  classic  ideal,  is 
broken,  never  to  be  restored.  Henceforth  the  idea  tran- 
scends the  form  in  dialectic  and  symbolism,  or  the  empty 
form  is  elaborated  in  euphuism  and  rhetoric.  Euripides 
and  Plato,  the  two  chief  representatives  of  Hellenism  for  the 
sequent  centuries,  are  also  in  a  sense  its  destroyers.  The 
Greeks'  native  facility  in  abstraction,  ratiocination,  dialectic, 
and  the  rhetorical  expansion  of  the  idea  has  definitively 
triumphed  over  the  imaginative  and  plastic  genius  that 
achieved  its  perfect  artistic  embodiment.  Euripides,  charm-, 
ing  poet  and  fascinating  dramatist  though  he  be,  belongs 
distinctl\'  with  Schiller,  the  older  Goethe,  and  George  Eliot, 
and  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  to  the  inferior  type  of  artists  whose 
work  exudes  and  obtrudes  the  ideas  which  it  is  unable  to 
assimilate. 

Plato  is  himself  a  supreme  artist  in  whom  all  contradictions 
and  seeming  impossibilities  are  reconciled.  But  his  writings 
are  the  source  both  in  Greek  and  in  European  literature  of 
two  tendencies  incompatible  with  the  practice  and  the  appre- 
ciation of  the  purest  Hellenic  art  —  the  tradition  of  dialectical 
scholasticism,  and  the  tradition  of  mystic  symbolism. 

The  study  of  this  evolution  I  must  reserve  for  another 
occasion.  The  present  hurried  survey  must  turn  from  the 
generalized  ideal  Homeric  or  Sophoclean  qualities  of  Greek 
literature  to  the  consideration  of  certain  characteristics  which 
reveal  themselves  in  the  course  of  its  historic  life,  and  which 
after  its  sheer  artistic  beauty  contribute  chiefly  to  the  abiding 
interest  and  significance  that  distinguish  it  from  all  other 
literatures.  There  is  first  the  interest  which  attaches  to  the 
orderly  sequence  and  full  development  of  the  possibilities  of 
each  distinct  literary  form  or  kind  before  we  pass  to  the  next. 
No  secondary,  imitative,  and  therefore  partially  artificial, 
literature  can  exhibit  this  natural  and  artistic  growth. 
There  is  a  certain  painful  dissonance  between  the  rude 
primitive  style   and  culture   of  the  early  Romans  and  the 


14  GREEK  LITERATURE 

sophisticated  content  of  the  Euripidean  drama,  Menandrian 
comedy,  Euhemeristic  philosophy,  and  Sicilian  cookbooks 
which  they  translated  and  adapted  side  by  side  with  Livius 
Andronicus's  Saturnian  version  of  the  Odyssey.  A  sense  of 
amateurish  confusion  results  from  the  endeavors  of  the 
Italian  Renaissance,  the  French  Pleiade,  and  the  Elizabethans 
to  create  out  of  hand  on  classical  models  a  complete  literary 
assortment  of  dramas,  epics,  lyrics,  Pindaric  and  Horatian 
odes,  and  Juvenalian  satires.  But  the  Greeks  invented  or 
evolved  each  literary  form  to  meet  a  real  need,  and  the  orderly 
development  of  Greek  literature  through  epic,  lyric,  drama, 
history,  oratory,  and  philosoph}^,  in  contrast  to  the  artifi- 
ciality, and  at  the  same  time  the  amateurishness,  of  other 
literatures,  is  at  once  natural,  artistic,  and  professional. 
Natural  and  artistic  in  the  nice  adaptation  of  each  form  to  the 
life  out  of  which  it  grew  and  the  sentiments  which  it  expresses ; 
artistic  and  professional  in  that  each  form  was  elaborated  to 
the  exhaustion  of  its  possibilities  by  a  succession  of  competing 
artists,  early  apprenticed  and  trained  in  guilds  and  schools 
first  to  assimilate  and  then  to  surpass  the  work  of  their  pre- 
decessors. In  this  respect,  Greek  literature  is  the  counter- 
part of  Greek  sculpture  and  Italian  painting,  and  illustrates 
the  truth  on  which  Plato  bases  education  in  his  ideal  state 
that  those  who  are  to  achieve  greatness  in  any  art  must 
generally  be  TratSo^^ets,  bred  up  to  it  in  both  play  and 
work  from  childhood. 

Again,  Greek  literature  is  beyond  all  other  literatures  the 
spontaneous  outgrowth  of  the  national  life,  and  throughout 
the  classical  period  it  remained  in  touch  with  life.  The 
science  of  literature  will  demonstrate  this  by  proving  the  nice 
and  necessary  adaptation  of  the  ballad  and  epic  to  the 
Homeric  camp-fire  or  Mycenaean  palace,  of  the  personal  lyric 
to  the  expression  of  the  passionate  individualism  of  the  age 
of  colonial  adventure  and  political  unsettlement,  of  the 
choral  hymn  to  embody  the  conservative  ideals  of  the  athletic 


THE  STUDY  15 

aristocracy  of  Boeotia  and  the  Peloponnesus,  of  the  drama 
to  be  the  teacher  and  entertainer  of  triumphant  democracy 
in  the  city  state.  But  apart  from  these  ambitious  generaU- 
zations,  the  very  schoolboy  who  passes  from  his  Caesar  and 
Cicero  to  Xenophon  and  Homer  is  at  once  aware  that  he  has 
emerged  from  the  oratio  obliqua  and  the  oratorical  period  of 
self-complacent  statesmanship,  with  its  thumb  in  its  double- 
breasted  toga,  into  the  presence  of  real  people  who  do  not 
talk  like  a  book.  The  only  man  who  habitually  talks  like 
a  book  in  classical  Greek  literature  is  the  orator  Isocrates, 
who  is  not  an  orator,  but  a  schoolmaster  and  an  essayist. 
I  do  not  count  Thucydides,  because  his  style,  tortuous  as  it 
appears  to  us,  seems  to  have  come  as  naturally  to  him  as  the 
style  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Browning's  love  letters  did  to  them. 

Colloquial  Latin  has  to  be  studied  as  a  thing  apart,  a  sort 
of  low  life  below  stairs,  banished  from  the  dignified  drawing- 
rooms  of  literature.  But  colloquialism  and  idiom  are  so 
interwoven  with  the  artistic  fabric  of  Greek  style  that  many 
scholars  are  just  beginning  to  suspect  their  existence.  When 
the  skeptical  Iphigeneia,  in  a  passage  marked  by  colloquial 
idiom  throughout,  says,  "Don't  tell  me  that  you're  Orestes. 
Argos  and  Nauplia  are  full  of  him,"  the  German  commen- 
tators throw  up  their  hands,  and  Professor  Murray  senti- 
mentally translates :  — 

Argos  is  bright  with  him  and  Nauplia's  shore. 

But  Iphigeneia's  meaning  is  perfectly  plain  to  a  reader  of 
Bret  Harte  who  remembers  how  the  Arizona  bad  man 
replies  to  the  Boston  tenderfoot  who  announces  that  he  is  a 
prospector,  —  "Hell  is  full  of  such  prospectors." 

The  Latin  authors  minded  their  grammatical  p's  and  g's, 
and  rarely  committed  anacoluthon.  But,  always  excepting 
Isocrates,  the  best  Greek  writers,  provided  the  meaning  was 
clear  and  the  emphasis  just,  cared  as  little  for  the  sequence 
of  tenses,  the  common  concords,  and  the  painfully  explicit 


16  GREEK   LITERATURE 

distributive  reference  of  every  pronoun  to  its  proper  antece- 
dent as  a  vivacious  woman  does  to-day.  They  all  exhibit 
what  Wilamowitz  calls  the  healthy  nonchalance  of  Herodotus's 
Ionian  style. 

The  predominance  of  the  living  or  spoken  over  the  dead 
or  written  word  is  another  expression  of  the  same  quality. 
Classical  Greek  is  easier  to  follow  when  read  aloud  than 
either  German  or  Latin.  It  conforms  to  the  psychology 
and  follows  the  rhythms  of  natural  association  and  em- 
phasis rather  than  the  prescriptions  of  artificial  logic  and 
syntax.  Pre-dramatic  poetry,  if  not  always  sung,  was 
usually  recited.  Even  at  Athens  Homer  was  better  known 
by  the  recitals  of  the  rhapsodes  than  by  the  eye.  Greek 
plays  were  published  on  the  Dionysian  stage  in  editions  of 
twenty  thousand.  Oratory  in  its  very  nature  was  composed 
to  be  heard.  Even  history  was  recited  in  agonistic  compe- 
titions. Even  philosophy  in  Plato  assumes  the  form  of 
living  and  incomparably  true  and  natural  conversation  which 
makes  the  dialogues  for  those  who  know  how  to  use  them  a 
discipline  of  the  dialectical  faculties  which,  as  Coleridge  and 
Mill  remind  us,  no  progress  of  science  can  replace.  Even 
the  essayist  Isocrates  expects  his  essays  to  be  read  aloud. 
Our  exclusive  reliance  on  the  eye  and  habitual  neglect  of 
the  voice  and  ear  in  the  study  of  Greek  literature  is  the  most 
fatal  of  errors. 

And  being  thus  always  in  touch  with  life,  Greek  literature 
is  in  the  better  sense  of  the  word  realistic.  It  does  not  push 
realism  to  excess  by  reaction  against  the  thin  abstractness  of 
pseudo-classicism ;  it  does  not  observe  Nature  with  a  note- 
book, and  count  the  streaks  in  the  tulip,  or  endeavor  to 
deduce  moral  thunder  from  daisies  and  buttercups  and 
celandines ;  it  does  not  describe  fleeting  moods  and  analyze 
unconscious  motives  with  falsifying  emphasis.  But  it  com- 
poses with  the  eye  on  the  object  and  unhampered  by  any 
pseudo-classic   canons  of   artificial   taste  or   restrictions   of 


THE  STUDY  17 

vocabulary.  It  calls  a  spade  a  spade,  compares  Ulyssey 
tossing  through  a  restless  night  to  a  haggis  on  the  fire,  and 
Ajax  to  an  ass,  not  with  Pope  to  "the  slow  beast  with  heavy 
strength  endued."  It  is  not  afraid  to  show  the  infant 
Achilles  slobbering  on  the  lap  of  Phoenix,  to  repeat  the  babble 
of  Orestes's  nurse,  or  echo  the  shrieks  of  Philoctetes.  "  I 
shall  never  cease  crying  to  our  French  authors,"  exclaims 
Diderot,  "truth,  nature,  the  ancients,  Sophocles,  Philoctetes. 
The  poet  exhibited  him  on  the  stage  crouching  at  the  entrance 
of  his  cave  and  covered  with  filthy  rags."  The  antithesis  of 
classical  and  realistic  is  as  false,  then,  as  the  opposition  of 
classic  and  romantic.  In  both  cases,  the  other  extreme  is 
the  thin  artificiality  and  false  dignity  of  the  secondary  and 
pseudo-classic,  while  the  genuine  Greek  classic  in  the  ter- 
minology of  Aristotle's  Ethics  holds  the  virtuous  mean. 

The  theme  of  Greek  poetry  is  in  Plato's  and  Aristotle's 
definition  the  imitation  of  human  action,  and  only  so  much 
stage  setting  of  description  of  nature  and  motivation  of  psy- 
chological introspection  as  conduce  to  truth  and  right  per- 
spective in  that.  It  conveys  less  minute  truth  of  a  certain 
order  than  some  kinds  of  modern  descriptive  and  meditative 
verse.  But  it  also  has  infinitely  less  error  and  extravagance. 
If  there  are  no  Greek  poems  to  match  Keats's  Ode  to  the  Night- 
ingale or  Shelley's  Ode  to  the  West  Wind,  there  is  also  nothing 
like  Browning's  Childe  Roland,  Rossetti's  Blessed  Damozel,  or 
Poe's  Al  Aaraaf,  and  long  communion  with  Sophocles  and 
Aeschylus  and  Pindar  impairs  the  capacity  to  appreciate 
them  in  the  modern  student. 

In  short,  Greek  poetry  springs  out  of  life,  remains  always 
in  touch  with  life,  sees  life  steadily  and  sees  it  whole,  and 
therefore  presents  to  the  imaginative  reason  the  broadest, 
sanest,  truest  poetic  criticism  of  life.  One  cause  of  this  is 
that  the  Greek  race,  like  a  happy  man,  came  to  each  experi- 
ence of  life  in  its  season  and  tasted  its  full  flavor  before 
passing  on  to  the  next. 


18  GREEK  LITERATURE 

That  old  Greek  life  has  passed  away.  It  is  the  business  of 
the  professional  archaeologist  and  historian  to  revive  its 
express  image  in  the  minutest  ascertainable  details.  But  for 
education  and  humane  culture  a  realistic  generation  may- 
overemphasize  this  aspect  of  Greek  studies.  The  technical 
detail  of  Greek  antiquities  is  not  in  itself  so  much  more 
valuable  than  that  of  Egypt,  Assyria,  China,  Japan,  or  the 
Middle  Age  that  we  should  burden  our  memories  with  its 
unretainable  minutiae.  As  Emerson  says,  "time  dissipates 
to  shining  ether  the  solid  angularity  of  facts"  —  a  dangerous 
text  for  the  American  collegian.  But  my  meaning  is,  not 
that  we  should  dispense  with  facts,  but  that  education  and 
culture  must  select  the  facts  that  concern  us  as  men,  not  as 
specialists,  and  not  waste  upon  the  history  and  structure  of 
the  Dionysiac  theatre,  the  topography  of  the  Forum,  or  the 
fashion  of  draping  the  toga,  the  scant  time  and  attention  that 
is  all  too  little  for  the  appreciation  of  the  drama  of  Sophocles 
and  the  oratory  of  Cicero.  The  Greeks  above  all  other 
peoples  extracted  from  every  human  and  natural  experience 
its  abiding  spiritual  significance.  It  is  this  that  largely  con- 
stitutes the  enduring  value  of  their  history  and  literature, 
and  it  is  on  this  that  if  we  are  wise  we  shall  concentrate  atten- 
tion. A  dozen  literatures  supply  materials  for  the  theory 
of  the  epic,  or  studies  in  tribal  morality  and  folk-lore.  The 
Chanson  de  Roland  and  the  Nibelungenlied  are  almost  as  good 
cadavers  for  dissection  in  the  seminar-room  as  the  Iliad. 
But  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  are  the  only  adequate  mirrors  of 
the  heroic  and  adventurous  poetic  adolescence  of  humanity. 
The  theory  and  conjectural  origins  of  the  lyric  can  be  ex- 
pounded in  connection  with  the  lyric  of  Provence,  Italy, 
Iceland,  or  the  ballads  of  early  England.  But  unless  the 
actual  cadences  of  Sappho,  Alcaeus,  and  Pindar  are  echoing 
in  our  memories,  we  shall  have  missed  the  knowledge  of  the 
highest  reaches  of  song  and  go  through  life  with  ears  attuned 
to  the  second-best. 


THE  STUDY  19 

Realism  brings  out  the  analogies  between  Greek  athletics 
and  our  own,  and  antiquarianism  writes  treatises  on  the 
order  of  events  in  the  pentathlon.  But  the  net  outcome  of 
his  athletics  was  for  the  Greek,  and  ought  to  be  for  us,  the 
Apoxyomenus  and  the  Diadumenus,  the  sophrosyne  of  the 
Platonic  Charmides,  the  gracious  form  of  Lysis  in  the  pa- 
laestra standing  with  the  other  boys  and  youths,  wearing  a 
crown  upon  his  head  like  a  fair  vision,  and  outsoaring  and 
outlasting  all  the  epinician  odes  of  that 

Son  of  the  lightning,  fair  and  fiery  star, 
Strong-winged  imperial  Pindar,  voice  divine. 

If  we  miss  that,  and  how  many  professional  classical  scholars 
do,  what  profit  is  there  in  the  technical  history  of  Greek 
athletics  ? 

Many  peoples  and  countless  individuals  have  known  the 
indescribable  thrill  that  comes  with  the  first  awakening  of 
the  expanding  intelligence  to  the  enlarging  conceptions  of 
new-born  science  and  philosophy.  But  the  pure  quintessence 
of  that  spiritual  intoxication,  caught  by  Lucretius,  Bruno, 
Emerson,  Huxley,  Tyndall,  and  how  many  others,  is  to  be 
tasted  only  in  the  pre-Socratic  philosophic  poets  of  Greece. 
"It  is  as  impossible  to  apprehend  the  true  origins  of  science 
without  having  studied  these  primitive  savants,  as  to  acquire 
the  sense  of  the  highest  poetry  without  knowing  Homer," 
says  Renan. 

Other  peoples  have  had  a  popular  drama,  partly  original, 
and  a  secondary  artistic  drama  derived  from  the  Greeks. 
The  Greek  drama  was  both  popular  and  artistic,  and  the 
source  of  all  the  rest.  Other  nations  have  had  their  Frois- 
sarts  and  their  Sir  John  Mandevilles,  but  Herodotus  remains 
the  unapproachable  type  of  the  historian  conteur  and  naively 
entertaining  traveler.  Other  peoples  have  analyzed  their 
own  social  and  civic  life  and  illustrated  the  drama  of  contem- 
porary history  by  a  perpetual  accompaniment  of  discussion 


20  GREEK   LITERATURE 

and  moral  and  political  comment,  but  none  so  exhaustively 
and  intelligently  as  the  Greeks.  Thucydides  is  still  the 
supreme  exemplar  of  the  hard-headed  political  positivist, 
the  prototype  of  Machiavelli  and  Guicciardini,  of  Hobbes 
and  La  Rochefoucauld.  There  is  no  other  historic  narrative 
at  once  so  vivid  and  minute  and  so  completely  intellectual- 
ized,  so  interpenetrated  and  fused  with  ethical  and  political 
reflection,  as  his  story  of  the  Peloponnesian  War.  Artisti- 
cally the  despair  of  Gray  and  Macaulay,  its  deeper  and  phil- 
osophic significance  for  the  development  of  modern  political 
thought  is  not  yet  estimated  nor  even  appreciated. 

The  interminable  discussions  of  clever,  disputatious  young 
men  in  the  endeavor  to  settle  the  problem  of  the  universe  or 
adjust  themselves  to  it,  are  a  familiar  theme  of  half-wistful 
satire  in  Thackeray.  More  philosophical  observers,  from 
Bacon  to  Mill,  have  recognized  their  enormous  potency  in 
shaping  the  opinions  and  ideals  of  the  men  whose  thoughts 
were  to  determine  the  thoughts  of  the  next  generation.  But 
the  only  adequate  expression  in  literature  of  this  great  human 
experience  is  the  dialogues  of  Plato.  They  are  the  dramatic 
idealization  of  this  side  of  the  spiritual  life  of  that  Athens  of 
Socrates  and  Pericles  in  whose  large  leisure  men  talked  with 
men  seriously,  passionately  on  other  topics  than  business  or 
politics,  and  their  discussions  created  the  logic,  the  rhetoric, 
the  psychology,  the  metaphysics,  and  the  ethical  and  political 
philosophy  of  western  Europe,  and  wrought  out  the  distinc- 
tions, the  definitions,  the  categories  that  have  shaped  and 
molded  all  subsequent  speculation. 

There  have  been  other  lost  causes  that  did  not  please  the 
gods,  though  they  pleased  Cato ;  but  none  that  have  left 
such  a  splendid  record  of  passionate  yet  thoughtful  oratory 
as  the  duel  of  Demosthenes  and  King  Philip.  And  the  Oration 
on  the  Crown  remains  for  all  time  the  crowning  expression 
of  the  consolatory  truth  that  there  are  some  things  better 
than  success,  some  defeats  that  are  preferable  to  victory. 


THE  STUDY  21 

Other  civilizations  and  other  ideals  of  life  have  had  their 
poljTiiaths  and  systematizing  philosophers  to  sum  them  up, 
their  Leibnitzes,  their  Kants,  their  Herbert  Spencers.  But 
they  all  shrivel  into  insignificance  compared  with  Aristotle's 
encyclopaedic  analysis  of  the  experience  of  his  race,  the  neglect 
of  which  by  the  American  universities  of  to-day  is  on  the 
broader  view  of  history  a  far  stranger  phenomenon  than  its 
slavish  acceptance  by  the  universities  of  mediaeval  Europe. 

In  this  rapid  survey  of  the  essential  and  abiding  values  of 
Greek  literature,  I  have  already  trenched  upon  my  final 
topic,  the  attitude  of  mind  in  which  we  should  approach  the 
study  of  that  literature  and  the  methods  of  interpretation 
and  appreciation  which  we  should  prefer  among  the  many 
which  the  specialties  or  the  literary  fashions  of  the  age 
present  to  our  choice.  I  should  like  to  define  and  illus- 
trate by  horrible  examples  the  method  of  undiscriminat- 
ing  erudition  ;  the  philological  Sherlock  Holmes  method  of 
completing  the  record  by  sweat-boxing  the  evidence ;  the 
method  of  evolution  and  the  pure  a  priori  science  of  litera- 
ture ;  the  folk-lore  method  that  makes  Homer  a  lively 
barbarian,  interprets  Plato  by  the  Orphic  tablets  of  south- 
ern Italy,  and  finds  something  of  the  "  medicine  man " 
in  Sophocles's  King  Oedipus ;  and,  chief  of  all,  the  latest 
English  blend  of  sentimental  mediaevalism  with  romantic 
anthropology.  But  time  fails,  and  this,  too,  must  be  re- 
served for  another  occasion.  It  is  better  so,  for  the  tone 
that  I  should  be  forced  to  adopt  might  be  thought  unbecom- 
ing in  a  professional  student,  and  could  easily  be  mistaken 
for  the  wooing  of  a  cheap  applause  by  facile  appeals  to  the 
penchant  that  a  general  audience  has  to  ridicule  all  minute 
scholarship  as  pedantry.  My  objection  is  not  to  the  minute- 
ness, or  even  to  the  pedantry,  of  modern  research,  but  to  its 
systematic  and  falsifying  ingenuity,  and  its  endeavor  to 
apply  the  rigid  methods  of  science  in  alien  matter.     It  is 


22  GREEK   LITERATURE 

often  urged  that  the  scholar  with  a  system  and  a  bias  and  a 
point  to  prove  is  harmless,  helpful  even  by  the  stimulus  he 
imparts  and  the  interest  he  awakens.  But  it  is  not  so.  He 
diffuses  a  fog  of  hypothesis  between  the  reader  and  the  plain 
facts  of  the  tradition,  w^hich  are  interesting  enough  without 
adventitious  stimulus,  if  we  only  can  see  them  simply  and 
sanely  in  the  white  light  of  objectivity  and  the  dry  light  of 
the  intellect.  The  first  advice  to  give  to  the  general  reader 
and  the  young  scholar  is  to  find  out,  if  he  can,  the  safe  and  sane 
men,  of  whom  Jebb  is  the  consummate  type,  and  confine  his 
reading,  or  at  least  pin  his  faith,  to  them.  The  ingenious  sys- 
tematizers  and  brilliant  constructors  of  hypotheses  cannot 
be  trusted  to  quote  with  relevancy  or  translate  with  accuracy. 
Physical  science  eliminates  this  wild  work  by  the  tests  of  the 
laboratory.  But  in  the  domain  of  literary  and  philological 
investigation  few  of  us  realize  the  amount  of  misstatement 
and  unprovable  assertion  that  circulates  in  reputable  and 
pretentious  books. 

After  this  diatribe,  you  will  ask  me  what  is  my  shibbo- 
leth, my  system?  the  point  that  I  would  prove?  my 
method  for  the  study  of  Greek  literature?  If  I  must  as- 
sume a  label,  it  is  the  unity  of  literature,  the  unity  of  the 
human  spirit  —  of  the  European  spirit  at  least,  from  Ho- 
mer to  Tennyson,  and  the  interpretation  of  literature  by 
Emerson's  principle  that  all  the  best  books  seem  to  have  been 
written  by  one  man.  That  principle  is  subject  to  many  qual- 
ifications, of  which  more  soon.  But  it  will  prove  a  safer 
guide  than  the  systematic  exaggeration  of  differences  and 
the  over-curious  observation  concerned  with  irrelevant 
details  of  local  and  historical  color.  It  will  at  least  save  us 
from  the  folly  of  condescending  allowance  for  the  imma- 
turity of  the  great  minds  of  antiquity ;  the  absurdity  of 
confounding  the  survivals  of  mythology,  or  the  symbolism 
of  poetic  personification  in  Sophocles  and  Aeschylus  with 
their   religion  of  the  imaginative  reason ;    and  the  senti- 


THE  STUDY  23 

mentality  that  alternately  strives  to  bring  the  classics 
nearer  to  us  by  mediaevalizing  diction  and  strained  fan- 
tastic interpretations,  or  despairingly  proclaims  that  they 
must  always  remain  sealed  books  to  the  Christian,  the 
modern,  the  romantic  mind. 

This  is  the  burden  of  an  eloquent  paper  by  Professor 
Bury  —  the  anima  naturaliter  pagana  —  which  we  can  never 
recover ;  and  the  absence  of  which  vitiates,  he  thinks,  the 
neo-classic  revivals  not  only  of  Keats  and  Shelley,  but  even 
of  Tennyson,  Arnold,  and  Swinburne.  Professor  Bury's 
warning  against  the  intrusion  of  modern  sentiment  into  our 
scholarship  and  criticism  was  timely  in  1891,  and,  as  I  have 
already  hinted,  is  still  more  so  now.  But  I  fail  to  see  that 
the  impossibility  of  recapturing  the  anima  naturaliter  pagana 
is  any  ground  for  despairing  of  our  intelligent  understand- 
ing of  Greek  literature  or  rejecting  the  legitimate  pleasure 
which  we  derive  from  the  exquisite  neo-classic  poetry  of 
England  and  the  beautiful  translations  of  Professor  Murray. 
Why  should  we  wish  to  recover  the  Greek  pagan  soul, 
or  need  to  in  order  to  appreciate  Greek  poetrj^  and  art? 
Professor  Burj^  proves  that  we  cannot  hope  to  feel  precisely 
as  the  ancient  Greeks  did.  True.  A  middle-aged  man  can 
rarely  feel  as  a  youth  of  twenty.  But  he  can  understand  and 
sympathize  and  enjoy.  The  differences  betw^een  the  an- 
cient and  modern  mind  are  very  real.  But  they  arise  nat- 
urally out  of  conditions  which  we  can  comprehend,  and  no 
more  than  the  equally  real  differences  in  the  psychology  of 
men  and  women  do  they  preclude  the  larger  inclusive  intelli- 
gence that  heightens  the  spiritual  values  of  companionship  by 
the  piquant  sense  of  contrast  and  identity  in  diversity.  This 
at  least  is  the  mood  in  which  I  prefer  to  approach  Greek  and 
modern  poetry,  and  in  justification  of  it  I  will  conclude  these 
imperfect  hints  and  suggestions  by  dwelling  for  a  few  minutes 
on  some  of  the  perhaps  partly  fanciful  imaginative  and  emo- 


24  GREEK   LITERATURE 

tional  contrasts  which,  to  my  apprehension,  seem  to  heighten 
our  enjoyment  and  deepen  our  appreciation  of  both. 

The  modern  spirit  is  an  organ  of  many  stops,  an  Aeolian 
lyre,  subject  to  every  skyey  influence  and  tremulously  re- 
sponsive to  gusts  of  feeling  and  winds  of  doctrine  that  blow 
from  very  far.     History  and  discovery,  science  and  psychol- 
ogy, have  enlarged  the  world  of  nature  and  man  beyond  our 
power  to  realize  it  in  a  single  brain.     The  Greek  polis  was  a 
sunny   clearing,    sharply   defined   against    the   dark   shades 
of  the  impenetrable  forest  of  uninvestigated  nature  and  un- 
explored barbaric   civilization   and  history  that  girded   it. 
Our  explorers  have  penetrated  that  selva  selvaggia  in  many 
directions  and  have  brought  back  tidings  of  many  a  magic 
fountain  and  many  an  enchanted  castle  hidden  in  its  gloomy 
depths.     But  they  have  found  no  issue  to  any  Elysian  Field 
or  Island  of  the  Blest,  no  thoroughfare  leading  to  any  rock- 
based  City  of  God,  and  their  travelers'  tales  have  destroyed 
our  contentment  with  our  bounded  horizon  and  our   child- 
hood's sense  of  the  completeness  and  stability  of  our  tran- 
sitory habitation.    The  men  who  compose  a  gathering  of  mod- 
ern savants  have  in  common  only  the  universal  feelings  of 
mankind,  the  indispensable  elements  of  education,  a  thin  var- 
nish of  culture,  and  a  few  philosophic  generalizations.  A  large 
part  of  every  brain  is  filled  by  an  unnatural  parasitic  growth 
of  specialized  knowledge,  cuneiform  inscriptions,  old  French 
epics,  constitutional  history  of  the  German  Empire,  the  chemis- 
try of  the  carbon  compounds,  the  embryology  of  the  earthworm. 
A  body  of  cultivated  Greeks  knew  and  did  nearly  the  same 
things.     They  knew  one  language,  whose  adequacy  for  all  the 
needs  of  expression  they  never  doubted,  one  literature,  one 
type  of  civilization,  one  religion,  one  art,  one  history.     They 
were  hemmed  in,  it  is  true,  by  the  ancient  civilizations  of  the 
East,  and  could  see  face  to  face  what  we  must  restore  by 
painful  reconstruction.     But  it  never  really  informed  their 
thoughts  or  touched  their  feelings.     The  Greek  as  we  see 


THE  STUDY  25 

him  in  Herodotus  gazes  at  the  marvels  of  EgjT^t  and  the 
East  "with  the  naive,  open-eyed  wonder  of  Miranda,  "Oh, 
brave  new  world,  that  has  such  people  in  it."  But  he  never 
disturbed  his  childlike  calm  by  any  effort  to  enter  into  the 
souls  that  dwelt  in  those  strange  shapes.  His  youthful 
exuberance  may  have  been  momentarily  dashed  when 
the  Eg^'ptian  priest  told  him  that  the  Greeks  were  always 
children  and  possessed  no  traditions  hoary  with  eld,  or  when 
his  boast  that  his  sixteenth  ancestor  was  a  god  was  met  by 
an  array  of  two  hundred  and  forty  statues  of  successive  high 
priests  that  had  lived  since  the  days  when  the  gods  walked 
on  earth.  But  he  felt  no  such  awe  as  that  which  prompted 
Rossetti's  cry  when  the  winged  bull  of  Nineveh  was  hoisted 
into  the  British  Museum  :  — 

Ah  !  in  what  quarries  lay  the  stone 
From  which  this  pygmy  pile  has  grown, 
Unto  man's  need  how  long  unknown, 
Since  thj"  vast  temples,  court  and  cone, 
Rose  far  in  desert  history. 

No  such  yearning  sympathy  with  alien  forms  of  spiritual 
life  as  breathes  through  the  question,  "  Dreamed  they  of  this, 
thy  worshippers?" 

And  what  we  attempt  for  the  Oriental  civilization,  which 
the  Greek  was  content  to  accept  as  part  of  the  pictur- 
esque external  setting  of  his  life,  we  try  to  do  for  every 
period  of  history.  We  seek  to  reanimate,  to  enter  dramati- 
cally into  the  souls  of  them  all,  the  Greek  himself,  the 
Roman,  his  Teutonic  conqueror,  the  mediaeval  man,  the 
man  of  the  Renaissance,  the  German,  the  French,  the  Rus- 
sian. Here  is  one  chief  cause  of  the  complication  and  range 
of  our  poetry.  Contrast  the  compact  unity  of  the  Greek 
drama,  confined  to  the  legendary  heroes  of  Greece,  and  gradu- 
ally narrowing  itself  to  the  fortunes  of  a  few  great  families  :  — 

Thebes  or  Pelops'  line, 
Or  the  tale  of  Troy  divine, 


26  GREEK  LITERATURE 

with  the  infinite  diversity  of  theme  of  the  EHzabethan  drama : 
Greek  legends,  Roman  history,  medieval  gesta,  tales  of 
Turkish  harems  or  Italian  palaces.  The  Greek  never  at- 
tempted to  think  or  feel  otherwise  than  as  a  Greek.  The 
modern  poet  is  constantly  essaying  to  enlarge  his  experi- 
ence by  nestling  in  the  brain  and  thinking  the  thoughts 
of  alien  men  and  looking  out  upon  the  world  from  the  win- 
dows of  strange  souls.  Such  poems  as  Tennyson's  St. 
Simon  Stylites,  Rossetti's  Dante  at  Verona,  Browning's 
The  Bishop  Orders  His  Tomb,  or  Mr.  Sludge  the  Medium 
have  no  analogues  in  Greek  literature. 

Modern  poetry  is  further  sophisticated  and  refined  by 
literary  reminiscence.  The  Greeks  did  not  employ  literary 
reminiscence  even  in  their  own  tongue  quite  in  the  modern 
way.  Homer,  of  course,  was  the  common  storehouse  of 
imagery  and  phrase,  and  each  literary  kind,  as  lyric,  epic, 
or  drama,  had  its  traditional  formulas.  The  gnomic  poets 
learned  at  school  were  constantly  quoted  and  paraphrased ; 
and  the  parodies  of  Aristophanes  assume  intimate  famili- 
arity with  a  considerable  body  of  lyric  and  dramatic  po- 
etry. But  it  took  the  form  of  direct  simple  quotation  or 
parody  rather  than  of  remote  allusiveness.  And  in  any 
case  the  allusions  were  confined  to  one  limited,  compact 
body  of  literature.  But  the  modern  English  poet  assumes 
an  equal  familiarity  with  four  literary  traditions,  the  Greek, 
the  Latin,  the  Hebrew,  and  the  English,  and  does  not  hesitate 
to  glance  at  any  other  that  may  be  present  to  his  memory. 
The  alternate  mosaics  from  classical  and  biblical  themes  in 
Dante's  purgatorial  staircase  symbolize  this  double  spiritual 
world  in  which  we  must  strive  to  be  at  home,  that  which  has 
its  source  in  Homer,  and  that  which  starts  from  the  Old 
Testament  —  "From  Pyrrha's  pebbles  or  old  Adam's  seed." 
It  lends  a  wondrous  variety  of  resource  to  our  poetry. 
A  Greek  poet  could  compare  the  beauty  of  his  heroine  to 
Aphrodite  rising  from  the  sea,  as  Tennyson  does  at  the 


THE  STUDY  27 

close  of  The  Princess;  but  Tennyson  can  also  trans- 
port us  to  another  world  of  feeling  and  imagination,  by 
telling  us  that  she  is  "  fairer  than  Rachel  by  the  palmy  well, 
fairer  than  Ruth  amid  the  fields  of  corn,"  and  flashes  us 
into  yet  another  by  saying  that  she  is  more  lovely  than 
the  maid  whom  "Gwythion  made  by  glamour  out  of  flowers." 
But  we  can  never  quite  subdue  this  jarring  material  to  the 
emotional  and  artistic  unity  achieved  by  the  Greeks. 
There  will  always  be  a  slight  sense  of  discord  in  Milton's 
Lycidas,  who,  though  "mounted  high,  thro'  the  dear  might 
of  Him  that  walked  the  waves,"  remains  yet  "the  genius  of 
the  shore  to  all  that  wander  in  that  perilous  flood";  or  in 
Dante's  "  Supreme  Jove  that  wast  for  us  nailed  to  the  cross  "  ; 
and  we  smile  when  Fletcher,  singing  the  power  of  love  in  the 
manner  of  the  Greeks,  tells  us  that  "fair  Callisto  was  a 
nun."  And  yet  again  what  a  range,  what  a  suggestiveness, 
it  lends  to  our  poetry.  Balder  Dead  is  a  Scandinavian  tale, 
told  in  Homeric  formulas.  In  Sohrab  and  Rustum,  Ho- 
meric imagery  is  transposed  to  an  Oriental  key.  William 
Morris  adds  a  strange  piquancy  to  Greek  legends  by  deck- 
ing them  out  in  fantastic  medieval  attire.  The  draught  of 
vintage  for  which  Keats  yearned  tastes  at  once  of  Flora  and 
Provencal  song  and  dance.  In  Tennyson's  Ulysses,  we 
enjoy  the  distilled  quintessence  of  Homer,  Dante,  and  the 
spirit  of  modern  science.  Godiva  is  an  old  English  legend, 
prefaced  Ijy  a  bit  of  Theocritus,  and  adorned  alternately 
with  biblical  and  Homeric  imagery.  The  whole  world  of 
Greek  mythology  lay  open  to  the  authors  of  Laodamia  and 
Oenone,  but  to  what  worlds  of  thought  and  feeling  inacces- 
sible to  the  Greek  are  we  transported  by  such  lines  as  — 

The  holy  time  is  quiet  as  a  nun 
Breathless  with  adoration. 

But  o'er  her  meek  eyes  came  a  happy  mist 
Like  that  which  kept  the  heart  of  Eden  green 
Before  the  useful  trouble  of  the  rain ; 


28  GREEK  LITERATURE 

His  countenance  like  richest  alchemy  ;  ' 

Or  like  an  old  world  mammoth  bulked  in  ice ; 

Where  the  kneeling  hamlet  drains 
The  chalice  of  the  grapes  of  God  ; 

The  world  is  too  much  with  us ; 

Shadowing  the  snow-limbed  Eve,  from  whom  she  came. 

And  just  because  through  history  and  literature  he  re- 
alizes the  past  so  much  more  intensely,  just  because  he  is 
ever  listening  to  the  lordly  music,  flowing  from  the  illimi- 
table years,  the  modern  poet  straining  for  a  glimpse  of  the 
vision  of  the  world  and  all  the  wonder  that  shall  be,  sees  or 
divines  more  of  the  future  than  the  Greek.  He  dwells 
in  spirit  under  the  cope  of  the  half-attained  futurity,  he  strives 
to  identify  himself  with  the  prophetic  soul  of  the  wide  world, 
dreaming  on  things  to  come.  He  sings  hymns  unbidden 
till  the  world  is  wrought  to  sympathy  with  hopes  and  fears 
it  heeded  not.  He  dreams  of  what  the  world  will  be  when 
the  years  have  passed  away.  This  note  is  wanting  in  Greek 
poetry.  The  Greek  poet  rarely  fancied  that  the  thoughts 
of  men  were  widened  by  the  process  of  the  suns.  The  an- 
ticipations of  Keats's  Hyperion  in  Aeschylus  are  very  faint, 
and  Professor  Murray's  argument,  that  because  the  Greeks 
in  fact  progressed,  they  had  our  idea  of  Progress,  is  an  obvi- 
ous equivocation.'  The  Greeks  either  conceived  history 
as  a  gradual  degeneration  from  a  not  very  remote  golden 
age  of  pastoral  simplicity,  or  more  philosophically  as  a 
series  of  recurrent  cycles  of  civilization  and  decay.  The 
idea  of  progressive  development  was  first  suggested  to 
thoughtful  Greeks  by  the  empire  of  Rome.  The  humani- 
tarian visions  of  Shelley,  Wordsworth,  and  Byron,  the  an- 
ticipations of  Locksley  Hall,  had  no  place  in  the  minds  of 
the  Greeks.     They  felt  no  passion  to  reform  the  world,  be- 

1  Rise  of  the  Greek  Epic,  Chapter  I. 


THE  STUDY  29 

cause  they  could  not  conceive  of  a  world  fundamentally 
different  from  the  one  they  knew.^  No  Greek  poet  ever 
felt  himself  as  a  nerve  over  which  wandered  the  else  unfelt 
oppressions  of  the  world.  No  Greek  poet  brooded  over  the 
fierce  confederate  storm  of  sorrow,  barricadoed  within  the  walls 
of  great  cities.  The  life  of  a  Greek  gentleman  was  pleasant 
enough,  barring  the  inevitable  limitations  of  life ;  that  the 
lives  of  slaves  and  barbarians  should  be  less  dejightful  was 
a  matter  of  course. 

In  many  other  ways,  too,  our  world  is  larger  and  at  the  same 
time  more  minutely  apprehended  in  its  details  than  the 
Greek.  For  the  tiny  basin  of  the  Mediterranean  we  have 
substituted  the  whole  terraqueous  globe.  We  survey  man- 
kind from  China  to  Peru,  we  hear  the  long  wash  of  Aus- 
tralasian seas,  and  breathe  in  converse  seasons. 

Past  the  wall  unsiirmounted  that  bars  out  our  vision  with  iron  and 

fire 
We  have  sent  forth  our  soul  for  the  stars  to  comply  with  and  suns 

to  conspire. 

From  this  unsatisfying  sense  of  vastness  and  complexity 
springs  much  of  the  distinctive  melancholy  of  modern  poetry. 
It  is  an  error  to  suppose  that  the  Greeks  were  always  blithe 
and  happy  and  free  from  this  taint  of  melancholy.  From 
Homer  to  the  latest  epigram  of  the  Anthology,  there  runs 
through  Greek  literature  a  continuous  wail  for  the  impo- 
tence of  man,  the  brief  bloom  of  youth  and  beauty,  the 
arbitrary  sway  of  fortune,  the  delusiveness  of  hope,  the 
inevitableness  of  age  and  death.  But  this  natural  melan- 
choly, though  freely  expressed  when  the  mood  came,  was 
not  an  habitual  attitude  of  mind,  and  passing  attacks  of 
it  were  soon  "boxed  out  of  the  Greek  lad  and  spun  out  of 
the  Greek  girl,"  as  Iluskin  tells  us.     The  modern  melan- 

'  Plato  is  an  exception  to  every  limiting  generalization. 


30  GREEK  LITERATURE 

choly  is  a  different  thing.  It  is  a  sense  of  bewilderment 
and  bafflement  at  the  complexity  of  the  world ;  a  name- 
less chill  of  horror  and  helplessness  in  the  face  of  its  pitiless, 
unfeeling  immensity  —  the  feeling  expressed  with  appalling 
vividness  and  intensity  in  Robert  Louis  Stevenson's  Pulvis 
et  umbra.  To  the  fancy  of  the  ancient  poet,  the  stars  were 
a  chorus  of  nymphs  dancing  about  the  altar  of  the  moon ; 
resplendent  powers  conspicuous  in  the  ether,  bringing  note 
of  summer  and  winter  to  man ;  the  sparkling  gems  of  the 
plumage  of  Juno's  peacock  transferred  to  decorate  the  sky ; 
bright  eyes  of  love  shining  down  upon  the  earth.  To  the 
modern,  if  he  lets  his  fancy  wander  from  the  literal  truth 
of  science  so  far  as  to  call  them  eyes,  they  are  "innumerable, 
pitiless,  passionless  eyes ;  cold  fires,  yet  with  power  to  burn 
and  brand  his  nothingness  into  man";  and  if  imagination 
peoples  them,  it  is  not  with  Plato's  purified  spirits  await- 
ing the  new  birth,  but  with  souls  as  troubled  and  oppressed 
as  our  own. 

Hesper,  Venus,  were  we  native  to  that  splendor,  or  in  Mars, 

We  should  see  the  Globe  we  groan  in,  fairest  of  their  evening  stars ; 

Could  we  dream  of  wars  and  carnage,  craft  and  madness,  lust  and 

spite, 
Roaring  London,  raving  Paris,  in  that  point  of  peaceful  light  ? 

This  is  one  source  of  our  modern  melancholy.  Another 
is  allied  to  the  feeling  of  a  harassed,  overworked  student, 
who  has  undertaken  too  many  courses  of  study.  We 
start  out  with  the  proud  boast  of  Emerson,  "what  Plato  has 
thought  we  may  think ;  what  a  saint  has  felt  we  may  feel ; 
what  at  any  time  has  befallen  any  man  we  can  understand." 
We  get  us  the  gains  of  various  men ;  we  give  ourselves  up  so 
many  times  to  Homer  and  Paganism,  to  Aphrodite  and 
Apollo,  to  Buddha,  to  Christ;  we  ransack  the  ages,  spoil 
the  climes;  we  gather  into  our  palace  of  art  all  forms  and 
pressures  past  of  painting  and  sculpture ;  the  gracious  shapes 


THE  STUDY  31 

of  every  mythology,  the  aspirations  of  all  religions,  the  for- 
mulas of  all  philosophies;  and  drink  deep  of  "the  unsealed 
springs  where  science  bedews  her  daedal  wings";  we  fancy, 
like  Keats's  Apollo,  that  knowledge  enormous  will  make  a  god 
of  us ;  names,  deeds,  gray  legends,  dire  events,  rebellions, 
majesties,  sovereign  voices,  agonies,  creations,  and  destroy- 
ings,  all  at  once,  pouring  into  the  wide  hollows  of  our  brain. 
But  alas  !  the  hollows  of  our  brains  are  no  wider  than  those 
of  Sophocles  or  Plato.  In  giving  to  every  passion  some- 
thing we  have  left  for  no  passion  truly  anything.  A  man's 
reach  should  exceed  his  grasp,  our  poet  tells  us,  but  it  was  not 
in  the  mouth  of  a  happy  man  that  he  put  the  saying.  Our 
palace  of  art  has  too  many  and  too  splendid  apartments  to 
be  a  comfortable  habitation  for  the  spirit ;  and  we  wander 
restlessly  from  chamber  to  chamber  like  Caligula,  or  Nero 
in  his  Golden  House.  We  stand  helpless  before  our  accu- 
mulated treasures ;  they  master  us,  we  cannot  master  them. 
We  cannot  apprehend,  coordinate,  or  unify  them ;  they  are 
the  possession  of  humanity,  not  of  individual  man.  Heirs  of 
all  the  ages,  we  lack  strength  to  enter  upon  our  inheritance. 
"The  man  in  the  street,  finding  no  worth  in  himself  which 
corresponds  to  the  force  which  built  the  town  or  sculptured  a 
marble  god,  feels  poor  when  he  looks  on  them,"  says  Emer- 
son. And  the  modern  man,  contemplating  the  gathered 
.spoils  of  the  ages,  the  relics  of  five  civilizations,  collected  in 
libraries  and  museums,  murmurs  with  Keats,  gazing  help- 
lessly at  the  Elgin  marbles:  — 

My  spirit  is  too  weak ;   mortality 
Weighs  heavily  on  me  like  unwilling  sleep. 
And  each  imagined  pinnacle  and  steep 
Of  god-like  hardship  tells  me  I  must  die. 

And  so  we  yearn  for  the  simple,  sensuous  life  of  the  Greek, 
who  knew  only  a  few  things,  but  those  perfect  —  his  Homer, 
his  marble  gods,  his  Sophoclean  tragedy,  and  music,  and 


32  GREEK  LITERATURE 

gymnastic,  and  the  blithe,  wholesome  life  mider  the  clear 
Attic  sky. 

It  is  in  this  mood  that  we  deplore  the  victory  of  the 
pale  Galilean,  sentimentalize  over  Charmides,  write  pas- 
sionate hymns  to  Apollo  and  Persephone,  make  it  our 
mission  to  banish  those  pale  spectres,  virginity,  mysticism, 
and  melancholy;  pray  to  Our  Lady  of  Pain  to  come  down 
and  relieve  us  from  virtue ;  cry  out  to  the  modern  spirit, 
"why  wilt  thou  cast  the  roses  from  thy  hair"  ;  and  attempt 
with  Heine  to  patch  up  the  fictitious  quarrel  which  Chris- 
tianity has  cooked  up  between  mind  and  body.  But  this  is 
a  false  and  morbid  sentiment.  We  cannot  reascend  the 
stream  of  time,  and  the  effort  to  renounce  Christianity, 
chivalry,  romanticism,  and  all  the  works  of  the  modern  and 
mediaeval  spirit  would  make  of  us  at  the  best  hungry  Greek- 
lings,  not  Greeks.  ''Not  to  be  scorned  and  rejected  of 
men,"  says  Homer,  "are  the  splendid  gifts  of  the  gods,  which 
they  bestow  according  to  their  oAvn  good  pleasure,  and  no 
man  chooses  for  himself."  We  cannot  renounce  our  psycho- 
logical heritage,  the  more  delicate  and  varied  sensibilities 
with  which  the  centuries  have  endowed  the  modern  soul. 
A  day  with  Charmides  in  the  palaestra  of  Taureas  would 
perhaps  prove  inexpressibly  wearisome  to  his  most  enthu- 
siastic modern  devotees,  even  were  Socrates  present  to  lead 
the  conversation ;  and  Pindar's  athletes  are  far  more  precious 
to  us  in  the  Olympian  odes  and  in  the  marble  of  Phidias  than 
they  would  be  in  the  flesh.  The  flower  and  quintessence  of 
that  younger  time  abides  with  us  in  the  winter  of  the  world, 
preserved  in  art  and  hterature,  like  "summer's  distillation, 
a  liquid  prisoner  pent  in  walls  of  glass."  "I  pour  thee 
such  wine,"  the  genius  of  the  past  cries  out  to  modern 
man :  — 

Leave  the  flesh  to  the  fate  it  was  fit  for!  the  spirit  be  thine! 

By  the  spirit,  when  age  shall  o'ereome  thee,  thou  still  shalt  enjoy 

More  indeed,  than  at  first  when  unconscious,  the  life  of  a  boy. 


THE  STUDY  33 

We  cannot  recover  the  habitual  temper  of  mind  that  created 
Greek  poetry.  But  we  can  make  of  it  an  incomparable  edu- 
cational instrument  in  youth,  and  in  our  riper  years  a  posses- 
sion of  beauty  that  will  keep  amid  the  turmoil  and  distrac- 
tions of  our  fevered  modern  life  "a  bower  quiet  for  us  and  a 
sleep  full  of  sweet  dreams  and  health  and  quiet  breathing." 

Paul  Shoret. 


EPIC  POETRY 

It  is  the  unique  distinction  of  the  literature  of  the  Greeks 
that  the  best  comes  first.  With  other  peoples  the  efflores- 
cence of  national  genius  waits  upon  slower  processes  of 
germination.  With  the  Greeks,  at  the  very  dawn  of  their 
history,  poetry  had  burst  forth  into  immortal  bloom.  The 
evolution  in  orderly  sequence  of  the  later  products  of  Hel- 
lenic literature  can  be  fairly  well  discerned ;  the  antecedents 
of  the  epic  alone  lie  far  beyond  our  vision,  as  they  lay  far 
beyond  the  vision  of  the  Hellenes  themselves.  The  stories 
of  Achilles  and  Odysseus  absorbed  or  displaced  alike  the 
primitive  hymns  to  the  gods  and  the  songs  in  honor  of  the 
other  heroes  of  the  race.  In  their  past  the  Greeks  dis- 
covered no  authentic  poetry  older  than  Iliad  or  Odyssey. 
All  the  rest  had  vanished  in  the  thin  air  of  irreparable  loss. 

Unlike  the  moderns,  the  Greeks  were  untroubled  to  dis- 
cover the  sources  whose  mingled  currents  made  that  large 
stream  of  Homer  whence  were  drawn  all  forms  of  eloquence 
in  Greece  itself ;  even  as  Homer  himself  says  that  all  rivers 
and  fountains  spring  originally  from  Father  Ocean.  Thrice 
and  four  times  happy  were  the  Greeks  in  their  almost  total 
lack  of  prescience  of  the  dread  "Homeric  Question,"  whose 
persistent  intrusion  into  literary  criticism  since  Wolf's  Pro- 
Ugomena  might  well  seem  to  indicate  to  the  world  at  large 
that  those  who  deal  with  Greek  at  first  hand  find  the  per- 
manent value  of  the  Greek  epic  less  in  the  great  love  and 
long  study  of  the  art  and  humanity  of  its  greatest  monu- 
ments than  in  chasing  the  ignis  fatuus  of  a  typical  problem 
of  methodical  research.     If  we  are  not  to  rob  ourselves  of 

34 


EPIC   POETRY  35 

our  serener  joy,  we  must  not  "ask  questions  that  would 
cause  a  man  to  hang  himself,"  as  Dr.  Johnson  said  to  the 
indefatigable  Boswell.  And  such  a  question  is  the  "Homeric 
Question." 

The  literary  appreciation  of  Homer  has  long  had  to  pay 
a  large  part  of  the  cost  of  acquitting  the  poet  from  the 
charge  of  writing  either  or  both  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  and  in 
either  case  of  possessing  genius  so  audacious  as  to  transcend 
the  critic's  measure  of  human  faculty.  The  just  estimation 
of  the  two  national  epics  of  Greece  is  impaired  if  we  care 
first  for  the  parts  and  last  for  the  whole,  and  are  not  con- 
tent to  remain,  in  guarded  moments,  incurious  whether  the 
Iliad  is  a  consohdation  of  a  "Wrath  of  Achilles"  and  a  "  Fall 
of  Ilium  "  and  whether  the  Odyssey  contains  a  conflation  of 
two  "Returns"  of  the  hero.  The  scholar  must  be  the  most 
searching  of  critics  and  at  the  same  time  preserve  undis- 
turbed another  self  that  is  able  to  estimate  larger  literary 
values,  and  especially  the  unity  of  moral  situation.  Did 
not  the  mighty  Descartes  acquiesce  in  a  via  media  and  bid 
his  obstinate  questionings  cease  before  the  source  of  the 
moral  unity  of  the  world  ?  We  must  learn  to  confess,  at  least 
in  moments  of  aesthetic  calm,  a  certain  apathy  to  the  vicissi- 
tudes of  the  struggle  between  Separatists  and  Unitarians; 
we  must  regain  the  naivete  of  the  Greeks  themselves,  and 
yield  an  unconditional  surrender  to  the  grandeur  and  charm 
of  the  Homeric  poems  by  whomsoever  written  and  at  what- 
ever time.  The  safety  of  unalloyed  delight  must  not  be 
imperiled  by  agitation  of  the  overhanging  Question. 

In  certain  passes  of  the  Alps,  the  poet  Gray  says  in  his 
Journal,  the  traveler  is  urged  by  his  guides  to  press  on  lest 
the  very  agitation  of  the  air  should  loosen  the  snows  above 
and  overwhelm  the  caravan.  "I  took  their  counsel,"  says 
the  poet,  "and  hastened  on  in  silence":  — 

Non  ragioniam  di  lor,  ma  guarda  e  passa. 


36  GREEK  LITERATURE 

But  in  tacitly  substituting  Homer  for  my  proper  theme, 
tlie  Greek  epic,  it  may  seem  that,  like  the  Earl  of  Oxford 
in  Pope's  time,  I  have  an  epical  way  of  beginning  in  the 
middle  of  things.  And  yet,  in  the  final  estimate  of  the 
cultural  influences  of  Greek  literature  upon  the  modern 
world,  no  other  poems,  much  less  any  other  of  the  many 
Greek  epics,  can  rival  Iliad  and  Odyssey  in  their  enduring 
value. 

No  other  epic  poet  of  Greece  might  venture  to  trespass 
on  Homer's  themes.  The  lost  epics  of  the  tale  of  Troy 
moved  round  the  periphery  of  the  circle  at  whose  centre 
stood  the  wrath  of  Achilles,  and  the  home-coming  of 
Odysseus.  The  lost  epics  of  the  story  of  Oedipus  and  Heracles 
paled  before  the  radiance  of  Iliad  and  Odyssey.  It  was  mere 
similarity  to  the  external  form  and  style  of  Homer  that 
gave  the  name  epic  to  the  cosmogonical  and  didactic  poems 
of  Hesiod  and  to  the  attempts  of  the  early  philosophers  to 
set  forth  the  Nature  of  Things.  The  Greek  epic  owes  its 
indefeasible  value  neither  to  Hesiod's  mythological  pano- 
rama of  the  evolution  from  chaos  of  the  primal  forces  of 
nature  and  its  peerage  of  the  Olympians,  nor  to  his  exposi- 
tion of  the  homely  moralities  that  give  a  spiritual  setting  to 
the  peasant's  daily  round  of  toil ;  still  less  to  the  ''philosophic 
epic"  of  Parmenides  and  Empedocles.  The  Greek  epic  lives 
only  through  the  two  poems  that  have  survived  out  of  the 
mass  of  heroic  minstrelsy  —  the  tale  of  battle  and  debate 
of  those  fifty-one  days  (in  a  ten  years'  war)  that  witnessed 
Achilles's  wrath  and  Hector's  death,  and  the  picture  of  adven- 
ture and  social  life  in  which  the  central  figure  is  the  war- 
worn, storm-tossed,  and  home-sick  son  of  Laertes,  whose 
story  the  poet  has  compressed  within  the  span  of  the  forty- 
one  days  of  the  Odyssey.  The  revival  of  the  heroic  epic 
in  the  Alexandrian  and  Roman  ages  is  but  the  faint  reflec- 
tion of  the  waning  splendor  of  the  sun  —  the  Argonautica, 
a  piece  justificative,  written  to  disprove  the  contention  of  the 


EPIC  POETRY  37 

autocrat  of  the  Museum  that  the  epic  of  Homer  might  not 
suffer  imitation,  and  the  other  artificial  heroic  epics  —  the  Pos^- 
homerica,  the  Diotiysiaca,  the  Taking  of  Ilium,  the  Capture 
of  Helen,  and  even,  with  all  its  sweetness,  Musaeus's  Hero 
and  Leander.  From  first  to  last  the  Greek  epic  is  dominated 
bj'  Homer. 

"In  the  kingdom  of  the  beautiful  in  the  world  below," 
said  Saint e-Beuve,  who  styled  himself  a  priest  of  Virgil, 
"  Homer  as  always  and  everywhere  will  be  the  first  and  most 
like  a  god."  The  "  divine"  Homer  has  been  a  classic  ever 
since  men  applied  their  thought  to  the  evaluation  of  literature. 
For  to  be  a  "  classic  "  is  to  possess  the  ability  to  persist  through 
different  ages  and  among  different  peoples  because  an  author 
discloses,  in  simple,  noble,  and  beautiful  form,  some  truth 
of  universal  humanity,  because  he  lays  hold  of  some  passion 
and  gives  it  a  vitality  that  renews  itself,  though  generation 
after  generation,  each  with  its  owti  moral  and  intellectual 
and  aesthetic  affinities,  seems  to  have  exhausted  the  secret 
of  its  power.  Homer  fives  through  his  responsiveness  to  a 
shifting  environment,  through  his  power  of  continual  read- 
justment, and  not  because  he  claims  the  charity  of  that  sym- 
pathy vouchsafed  by  some  to  the  infancy  of  the  race  and  to 
those  happy  children  whom  we  call  "the  ancients." 

It  is  from  the  point  of  view  that  Homer,  through  his  inex- 
haustible vitality,  has  been  longer  contemporaneous  than  any 
other  poet  of  the  world  that  I  venture  to  approach  the  ques- 
tion of  the  universality  and  permanent  value  of  the  Greek 
epic.  As  a  national  poet  Homer  had  an  unexampled  influ- 
ence on  the  life  and  thought  of  his  own  people,  and  he  con- 
stitutes a  dominant  part  of  the  cumulative  cultural  forces 
of  Hellas.  He  has  helped  to  form  the  understanding  and  refine 
the  taste  of  many  great  men,  and  he  has  been  a  constant  and 
vivifying  influence  in  European  literature.  And,  finally, 
the  qualities  that  insured  his  authority  in  the  past  still  appeal 
to  the  modern  world. 


38  GREEK  LITERATURE 

A  poet  who  speaks  to  all  the  world  speaks  most  of  all  to 
his  own  people.  The  united  voice  of  Hellas  proclaimed 
Homer  as  The  Poet.  To  the  Greeks,  above  and  beyond 
Pindar,  Aeschylus,  Sophocles,  Euripides,  stood  the  poet  of 
Iliad  and  Odyssey.  And  in  a  more  profound  sense  than  in 
the  case  of  any  teacher  in  verse  Homer  was  the  educator 
of  a  nation.  More  than  Hesiod  he  shaped  that  idealistic 
'  conception  of  the  gods,  which,  through  him  implanted  in 
the  nation's  faith,  distinguishes  the  religion  of  Hellas  from 
the  polytheisms  that  paralyzed  the  spirituality  of  the  nearer 
East. 

In  Homer's  picture  of  the  Trojan  war  the  Greeks,  his  own 
people,  saw  their  first  national  achievement.  Through 
Homer  they  became  conscious  of  themselves.  The  Greeks 
who  fought  about  the  deep-eddying  Scamander  were  their 
ancestors ;  and  in  the  fortitude,  ambition,  nobility,  resource- 
fulness of  these  men  and  in  their  caution,  pushed  to  the  verge 
of  cunning,  they  discerned  their  own  spiritual  ideals.  From 
Homer  youth  learned  the  legends  and  the  religion  of  the  race. 
Poets,  philosophers,  statesmen,  orators,  historians,  scien- 
tists, thinkers  about  God  and  the  veriest  triflers  with  human 
life,  all  ranks,  all  ages,  all  conditions  of  men  knew  and 
treasured  his  words.  It  was  not  only  scholars  like  Aristarchus 
who  had  far-reaching  command  of  his  verse.  Many  had 
learned  both  Iliad  and  Odyssey  word  for  word ;  Alexander 
the  Great,  whose  soul  burned  to  emulate  Achilles's  love  of 
glory,  knew  the  Iliad  by  heart.  For  centuries  professional 
rhapsodes,  attired  in  gorgeous  apparel,  declaimed  at  the 
public  festivals  the  verses  of  Homer  before  vast  audiences. 
A  highly  gifted  people,  whose  civilization,  if  measured  by  the 
standard  of  the  number  of  perfected  men  it  produced,  may 
well  be  pronounced  not  inferior  to  our  own,  acknowledged,  in 
all  the  vicissitudes  of  their  national  life,  unswerving  allegiance 
to  the  sovereignty  of  their  teacher-poet  for  more  than  a 
thousand  years. 


EPIC   POETRY  39 

So  varied  and  so  precise  indeed  was  Homer's  acquaintance 
with  life  that  the  Greeks  regarded  his  works  as  the  epitome 
of  all  knowledge.  From  him  could  be  learned  the  arts  of 
eloquence,  war,  statesmanship,  medicine,  and  even  any  craft. 
This  authority  had  no  small  part  in  establishing  the  or- 
thodoxy of  the  Greeks'  belief  that  a  poet  was  preeminently  a 
teacher,  —  a  doctrine  that  to  the  French  has  now  become 
I'heresie  de  V enseignement.  The  Greeks  never  surrendered 
their  moral  canon  of  aesthetics,  and  Strabo  inveighs  against 
the  Gallic  paradox  of  Eratosthenes  that  the  poet's  aim  was 
to  delight  the  mind  and  not  to  instruct.  Because  of 
the  commanding  position  he  enjoyed  as  the  teacher  of  youth 
Homer  was  made  the  chief  object  of  Plato's  attack  in  his 
endeavor  to  utilize  the  ethical  function  of  poetry  as  a  means 
to  supplant  the  older  morality  of  the  epic  by  a  more  spiritual 
creed.  But  the  poet  who  represented  men  as  men  are  and 
the  gods  as  his  age  conceived  the  gods  to  be  was  not  to  be 
driven  from  the  schools  by  the  passionate  protest  of  the  phi- 
losopher who  could  find  no  place  for  the  educative  forces  of 
feeling  in  a  system  built  on  abstract  reason.  Four  centuries 
after  Plato  boys  were  still  studying  Homer  in  school.  The 
teacher  of  the  Emperor  Julian  bade  his  charge  neglect  the 
pantomime  dances  of  the  day  —  "the  Phaeacian  youth  danced 
in  nobler  fashion."  The  Christians  fell  afoul  of  Homer  as 
the  incarnation  of  paganism  and  borrowed  some  of  their 
weapons  from  the  armory  of  Plato.  St.  Augustine's  verdict 
"dulcissime  vanus"  unites  the  condemnation  of  the  rigid 
moralist  and  the  lingering  sensibilities  of  the  sinner.  But 
Basil  the  Great,  in  the  fourth  century  of  our  era,  encouraged 
Christian  youth  to  profit  by  the  pagan  poet  whose  every 
teaching,  he  said,  inclines  to  virtue. 

For  the  varied  exigencies  of  life  the  verses  of  Iliad  and 
Odyssey  had  an  authority  and  a  pertinence  that  has  been 
the  lot  of  but  one  other  book.  A  single  line  was  warrant 
enough  for  the  "  jingoes  "  of  antiquity  to  back  their  claim  to 


40  GREEK  LITERATURE 

others'  territory.  In  a  verse  built  out  of  Homer  the  Spartan 
envoy  rejected  Gelo's  presumptuous  demand  of  leadership 
as  his  price  for  assisting  Greece  in  her  struggle  for  existence 
against  Persia :  — 

^  K€  /u,€y'  olfxwieuv    6  IleAoTrtST;?  'Aya/Ac'/xvwv. 

The  Roman  conqueror  of  Corinth  shed  tears  when  one  of 
his  captives,  commanded  to  show  his  youthful  skill  in  writing, 
inscribed  the  verse  ''Thrice  and  four  times  happy  the  Danaoi 
who  perished  there  in  broad  Troy  land."  The  philosopher 
Hierocles,  when  scourged  in  court,  flung  drops  of  his  blood 
into  the  face  of  his  judge,  exclaiming  with  Odysseus, 

Come,  Cyclops,  drink  my  blood. 

To  give  point,  to  establish  an  argument,  to  suggest  to  sculptor 
and  painter  their  ideal,  to  lend  to  talk  the  charm  of  apt 
recourse  to  the  poet's  art,  to  furnish  matter  of  dispute  alike  to 
the  learned,  to  "  corner-buzzers,"  and  to  diners-out,  to  cheer, 
to  console,  Homer's  words  were  always  on  the  lips  of  men. 

In  every  age  of  the  national  life  Homer  renewed  himself 
through  his  sensitiveness  to  his  surroundings.  He  had  no 
need  of  modernization  for  men  at  large ;  that  thinkers  read 
into  him  the  ideas  of  their  own  times  proved  his  "latent 
correspondences  with  human  nature."  He  never  became  out 
of  date;  " clearest-souled "  of  poets,  he  never  failed  to  make 
an  immediate  appeal  to  heart  and  mind.  In  a  larger  sense 
than  Dante  the  poet  of  a  nation,  there  was  in  him  no  mystery 
of  allegory  to  darken  the  ways  of  understanding;  no  insin- 
cerity of  belief  in  the  age  of  chivalry  he  depicted,  as  in  Tasso 
or  Ariosto ;  no  bias  of  theological  dogma,  as  in  Milton. 
As  he  made  known  the  emancipation  of  the  human  spirit 
from  Orientalism,  so  he  remained  the  prophet  and  the  guide 
of  the  free  Greek  mind  through  all  its  history. 

The  permanent  value  of  Homer  lies  also  in  the  fact  that 
he  constitutes  a  dominant  part  of  the  cumulative  cultural 


EPIC   POETRY  41 

forces  of  our  "spiritual  ancestors"  (as  Amiel  calls  the  Greeks) 
by  which  the  world  still  lives.  Lyric  and  drama  lie  nascent 
in  him.  Almost  every  form  of  the  unique  literature  of  the 
Greeks  confesses  his  authority  in  thought  and  language. 
It  is  not  a  small  thing  for  a  people  that  the  best  comes  first. 
Homer  established  a  standard  of  distinction  which  remained 
a  perpetual  challenge;  he  left  a  legacy  of  noble  artistic 
ideals ;  he  was  the  arbiter  of  taste ;  he  imposed  the  law  of 
simplicity,  lucidity,  truth  to  nature,  and  self-imposed  re- 
straint. Homer  first  saw  the  vision  of  Greece  —  the  equi- 
hbrium  of  moral  and  physical  beauty.  Whatsoever  things 
are  fair  in  Greece,  whatsoever  things  the  world  has  inherited 
from  Greece  and  is  not  content  to  let  die,  these  things  have 
their  fountain-head  in  Homer. 

The  more  truly  national  a  poet  is,  the  more  readily  does 
he  pass  the  limits  of  his  own  nation  and  enlarge  the  area  of 
his  quickening  influence,  if  he  appeals  to  a  common  human- 
ity. 

Rome  is  the  first  station  in  Homer's  progress  to  the  modern 
world,  whose  culture  unites  in  the  recognition  of  its  his- 
torical continuity.  It  was  at  Rome  that  the  art  of  transla- 
tion of  poetry  had  its  first  beginning,  and  Homer  was  the 
first  poet  ever  translated.  When  at  last  the  Latin  race,  groAvn 
to  intellectual  maturity  through  Greek  tutelage,  sought  to 
find  a  voice  at  once  for  its  pride  as  mistress  of  the  world, 
and  for  its  sense  of  devotion  to  the  gods  who  had  aided  the 
foundation  of  the  urbs  aeterna,  it  found  its  own  Homer  in 
Virgil.  No  one  would  have  been  more  astonished  than  the 
poet  of  the  Aeneid  to  hear  that  his  poem  was  thought  to  be 
superior  or  even  equal  to  that  of  his  master,  to  whom  he 
owed  the  general  movement  of  his  epic,  motives  both  signifi- 
cant and  trifling,  turns  of  phraseolgy,  and  countless  matters 
of  detail  that  made  up  the  dreary  catalogue  of  his  literary 
larcenies  compiled  by  Quintus  Octavius  Avitus.  "Non  est 
erubescendum  Vergilio  si  minorem  se  Homero  vel  ipse  fatea- 


42  GREEK  LITERATURE 

tur,"  says  Macrobius.  Virgil's  aim  was  to  enfranchise  in 
Latin  speech,  but  in  a  nobler  form  than  translation,  the  epic 
of  the  sovereign  poet 

a  quo  ceu  fonte  perenni 
Vatum  Pieriis  ora  rigantur  aquis. 

To  Velleius,  Lucan,  Silius,  Pliny,  and  Claudian,  Homer  still 
remains  the  type  of  the  immortal  poet.  But  in  a  burst  of 
admiration  on  hearing  part  of  the  Aeneid  read  aloud,  Pro- 
pertius  exulted  that  his  countryman  would  win  the  palm 
of  victory  over  the  Greeks.  To  Juvenal  Virgil  is  the  com- 
peer of  Homer.  Both  Homer  and  Virgil  occupy  the  arx 
musicae,  says  Priscian.  To  St.  Augustine  Virgil  is  "poeta 
magnus  omniumque  praeclarissimus  atque  optimus."  The 
great  controversy  has  begun. 

It  is  the  Roman's  position  as  the  poet  of  Italy,  rather  than 
his  inherent  superiority  to  Homer,  that  made  Virgil  pre- 
eminent in  the  falling  Western  Empire  and  in  the  Middle 
Ages.  While  in  the  East  Homer  had  inherited  his  large 
legacy  of  fame  and  continued  without  serious  interruption 
his  hold  on  the  culture  of  the  times,  in  Italy,  with  the  division 
of  the  Empire,  the  ability  to  read  Greek  was  almost  lost  by 
the  fifth  century.  Knowledge  of  Homer  was  kept  alive  in  the 
West  by  the  vogue  of  Virgil,  and  it  is  his  fellow-countryman 
rather  than  "that  Greek,  most  cherished  by  the  Nine"  whom 
Dante  is  naturally  led  to  choose  as  his  guide  to  the  dolorous 
realms  of  death.  There  is  scarcely  any  touch  of  indebted- 
ness to  Homer  in  the  Divine  Comedy;  yet  with  truth  to  fact 
and  to  Virgil's  modesty  Dante  makes  his  Master  say  : — 

Mark  Mm 
Who  in  his  right  hand  bears  that  falchion  keen. 
The  other  three  preceding,  as  their  lord. 
This  is  that  Homer  of  all  bards  supreme. 

Petrarch  stands  on  the  threshold  of  the  revival  of  Greek 
studies.     He  could  not  read  Greek,  but  he  wrote  an  "enthu- 


EPIC  POETRY  43 

siastic  letter  "  to  Homer.  In  the  National  Library  at  Paris 
there  is  a  copy  of  a  Latin  translation  of  the  Odyssey,  at  the 
end  of  which,  in  a  faltering  hand,  are  notes  written  by  the 
dying  poet. 

Not  until  Homer  was  printed  (in  1488)  did  he  really  reap- 
pear in  the  West.  The  day  of  the  indiscriminate  taste  of 
the  ]\Iiddle  Ages  had  passed.  Soon  the  poet  was  devoured 
by  the  Humanists  in  the  "holy  orgy"  of  the  Renaissance. 
"I  am  refreshed  and  fed  by  the  sight  of  his  words  (writes 
Erasmus)  even  when  I  cannot  understand  him."  The  second 
Scaliger,  who  said  that  "not  to  know  Greek  was  to  know 
nothing,"  as  a  youth  read  Homer  without  a  teacher  in  twenty- 
one  days. 

With  the  sixteenth  century  there  begins  that  wider  acquain- 
tance with  the  poet  which  distinguishes  the  culture  of  modern 
Europe.  Each  nation  in  turn  caught  the  passion  for  Greek 
and  for  Homer.  Like  Geneva,  in  the  proud  words  of  a 
participant  in  the  congress  of  diplomatists  at  Vienna,  Homer 
was  "not  a  grain  of  sand,  but  a  grain  of  musk  that  filled  all 
Europe."  In  the  sixteenth  century  there  was  published  an 
edition  or  a  translation  of  the  poet,  either  entire  or  in  part, 
on  an  average  every  eighteen  months. 

Inspired  by  Homer  to  write  the  Franciade,  Ronsard  gives 
himself  up  to  an  intellectual  debauch  :  — 

Je  veux  lire  en  trois  jours  I'lliade  d'Homere. « 

He  shuts  himself  up  in  his  room  and  issues  order  to  his 
servant :  — 

Au  reste,  si  un  Dieu  vouloit  pour  moi  deseendre 
Du  ciel,  ferme  la  porte  et  ne  le  laisse  entrer.  i 

Homer  stood  in  the  centre  of  the  battle  begun  by  Perrault 
in  1087  as  to  the  relative  superiority  of  the  ancients  and  the 
moderns.  To  the  champions  of  the  ancients  Homer  was  the 
absolute  norm  for  all  other  epic  poets ;  the  champions  of 
the  moderns  proclaimed  that  ho  was  soon  to  be  dethroned,  as 


44  GREEK  LITERATURE 

Aristotle  had  already  been  dethroned;  that  he  was  "tout 
monstrueux"  because  he  descended  to  the  meanness  of  men- 
tioning things  unbecoming  a  heroic  poet.  To  the  age  of 
Louis  XIV  the  epic  bard  must  have  a  courtier's  fastidious 
nicety  of  taste.  Homer's  "black  beans  and  peas"  must 
become  "golden  grain."     Says  the  Earl  of  Roscommon: — 

For  who  without  a  qualm  hath  ever  look'd 
On  holy  garbage  though  by  Homer  cook'd, 
Whose  toiling  heroes  and  whose  wounded  gods 
Make  some  suspect  he  snores  as  well  as  nods  ? 

And  Fitzgerald,  almost  in  our  own  time,  could  not  forgive 
Homer  for  his  "brutal  gods  and  heroes,"  though  the  genial 
Celt  confesses  that  he  distrusts  his  own  taste  in  the  face  of 
the  approbation  of  all  the  rest  of  the  world. 

The  agitation  of  literary  judgments  in  the  early  part  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  with  all  its  aberrancies,  clarified 
the  understanding  of  Homer's  art:  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey 
were  not  models  to  follow  but  masterpieces  to  inform  the 
judgment ;  they  were  not  allegories  composed  to  subserve 
a  moral  purpose  or  to  represent  the  conflict  of  civilization  with 
barbarism.  But  the  age  was  not  ripe  for  the  appreciation 
of  Homer's  naturalness,  simplicity,  and  plainness. 

The  decline  of  classicism  and  the  awakening  to  nature 
meant  the  rediscovery  of  Homer.  Virgil,  to  whom  excel- 
lence in  judgment  had  been  assigned,  as  invention  to  Homer, 
lost,  except  in  France,  his  position  of  preeminence.  Racine 
had  read  Homer  with  ease,  Bossuet  had  known  him  by  heart 
—  and  there  is  a  story  that  he  regularly  began  the  composi- 
tion of  his  orations  by  reading  his  favorite  Greek  poet. 
In  Telemaque  Fenelon  had  cast  the  spirit  of  Christianity 
over  an  Odyssean  epic  tinged  with  ethics  and  philosophy. 
But  the  genius  of  France  was  temperamentally  Virgilian. 
Voltaire  reviled  Homer  as  he  reviled  Shakespeare.  The 
appreciation  of  Homer  had  to  wait  for  Andre  Chenier, 
Bernardin  de  Saint  Pierre,  and  Chateaubriand. 


EPIC   POETRY  45 

But  Germany  was  meantime  swept  by  a  contagion  of  enthu- 
siasm for  Hellenism.  Schiller  said  that  if  a  man  has  lived 
only  to  read  the  twenty-third  Iliad,  he  cannot  complain 
about  life ;  and  from  his  musing  over  Homer,  his  companion 
in  his  solitary  walks  in  the  valley  of  the  Lahn,  came  Goethe's 
first  zeal  for  the  poet,  who  (he  said)  had,  together  with  Pol- 
ygnotus,  taught  him  every  day  that  "in  our  own  life  here 
above  ground  we  have,  properly  speaking,  to  enact  Hell." 

In  England  the  appreciation  of  Homer  had  never  suffered 
ecHpse.  ]\Iilton  molded  his  verse  on  Virgil's,  but  his 
favorite  book,  next  to  the  Bible,  was  Homer ;  and  his 
daughter  Dorothy  used  to  read  to  her  father  in  his  blindness 
the  verses  of  the  poet  whom  all  the  world  then  regarded  as 
the  blind  bard  of  Chios.  Statesmen  in  solemn  and  in  spor- 
tive mood  had  recourse  to  the  poet's  words  which  English- 
men, like  the  Greeks  themselves,  could  fit  into  the  occur- 
rences of  life.  The  dying  Lord  Granville  turned  for  a 
moment  from  consideration  of  the  preliminary  articles  of 
the  Treaty  of  Paris  to  repeat  the  speech  of  Sarpedon :  — 

"Ah,  friend,  if  once  escaped  from  this  battle,  we  were  for- 
ever to  be  ageless  and  immortal,  neither  would  I  myself 
fight  in  the  foremost  ranks,  nor  would  I  send  thee  into  the 
war  that  giveth  men  renown,  but  now  —  for  assuredly 
ten  thousand  fates  of  death  do  every  way  beset  us,  and  these 
no  mortal  may  escape  or  avoid  —  now  let  us  go  for- 
ward." 1 

Sheridan  took  Lord  Belgrave  to  task  for  misquoting 
Homer  in  the  House  of  Commons.  But  his  latest  biogra- 
pher pronounces  apocryphal  the  story  that  when  a  member 
of  the  House  fresh  from  the  University  ended  his  speech 
with  a  passage  from  Demosthenes,  Sheridan  began  his  reply 
with  the  words, 

Tov  8'  d7ra/i.£t/3o/x£vo5  Trpoaicfir}  SepiSavios  77/00)5. 

•  The  translations  cited  in  this  article  are  from  Lang,  Leaf,  and  Myers's 
Iliad  and  from  Butcher  and  Lang's  Odyssey. 


46  GREEK  LITERATURE 

Good  Dr.  Harrison  in  Amelia  is  ready  with  his  Homer, 
and  Mrs.  Atkinson  thinks  him  superior  to  all  other  writers. 
As  captain  of  the  Hampshire  grenadiers,  and  a  few 
years  before  he  conceived  the  idea  of  his  great  work. 
Gibbon  read  Homer  entire.  Shelley  said  that  "  as  a  poet 
Homer  must  be  acknowledged  to  excel  Shakespeare  in  tlie 
truth,  the  harmony,  the  sustained  grandeur,  the  satisfy- 
ing completeness  of  his  images." 

To  Carlyle,  the  poet  of  "the  richest-toned  artless  music" 
made  equal  appeal  as  to  Milton:  "I  love  it"  (the  Iliad), 
he  writes  in  a  letter  in  1834,  "better  than  any  other  book,  I 
think,  except  the  Bible."  The  French  Revolution,  which 
was  to  be  "such  a  book,  quite  an  epic  poem,  an  apotheosis 
of  sansculottism,"  is  full  of  Homeric  reminiscences. 

Those  who  love  Homer  find  him  again  in  part  in  Clough's 
Bothie.  To  Tennyson  his  own  Marie  d' Arthur  was  one  of  the 
twelve  books  of  a  great  epic,  "faint  Homeric  echoes,  nothing 
worth."  Oenone,  Ulysses,  Lucretius,  The  Princess,  attest 
the  poet's  love,  Virgihan  as  he  was,  for  "the  Ionian  father 
of  the  rest."  To  Gladstone,  Homer  was  a  "palace  of  enchant- 
ment," and  Matthew  Arnold  pronounced  judgment  that 
Iliad  and  Odyssey  are  the  most  important  poetical  monu- 
ments in  existence. 

Such,  then,  has  Homer  been  to  the  remoter  and  the  nearer 
past.  What  claim  has  he  to  occupy  a  permanent  place  in 
the  culture  of  the  future  ? 

We  are  far  removed  from  the  temper  of  mind  of  the  men 
of  the  Renaissance,  who  "went  down  on  their  knees"  to  the 
Greeks.  To-day,  the  brilliant  advance  of  the  physical 
sciences  and  the  rise  of  the  social  sciences  tend  to  displace  the 
centre  of  gravity  of  the  world's  culture.  Those  who  love  the 
ancient  classics  have  no  quarrel  with  science,  but  they  are 
disturbed  at  the  situation  in  our  own  country,  where  we  are 
now  facing  the  danger  of  a  society  apparently  intent  on  de- 
priving itself  of  that  general  knowledge  of  Homer  at  first- 


EPIC  POETRY  47 

hand  which  has  marked  the  culture  of  Europe  for  the  last 
four  hundred  years.  "The  further  from  the  spring,  the  more 
water  loses  its  taste  and  strength,"  Luther  said,  when  he 
found  he  needed  Greek  to  interpret  the  New  Testament; 
and  his  utterance  loses  none  of  its  truth  when  applied  to  the 
language  of  Homer : 

Ce  langage  sonore  aux  douceurs  souveraines, 
Le  plus  beau  qui  aoit  ne  sur  les  l^vres  humaines. 

Homer's  speech  is  born  of  his  race  and  mirrors  the  total 
effect  of  all  that  appeals  to  the  finer  outward  sense ;  it  is 
the  flower  of  Greece  in  its  springtime  ;  it  is  energetic,  harmo- 
nious, musical,  varied,  abounding  in  life.  The  diction  of  the 
poet  is  itself  confederate  to  the  precision  of  his  vision  and  the 
brilUance  of  his  external  outline.  Homer  is  vivid  because 
his  visual  imagery  is  concrete  and  because  he  translates 
action  and  emotion  into  simple  yet  penetrating  language. 
His  style  has  ease  even  when  it  is  torrential  in  its  vehemence ; 
it  can  be  plain  without  losing  its  nobility.  Matthew  Arnold's 
most  effective  point  in  his  analysis  of  Homeric  diction  is 
that  Homer's  style  retains  its  distinction  alike  when  the 
theme  is  elevated  and  when  it  is  humble ;  that  it  attains 
magniloquence  and  avoids  tumidity. 

But  Homer's  language  and  his  verse,  the  spiritual  media  of 
his  ideas  and  the  echoes  of  his  heroic  theme,  mean  less  to  the 
mass  of  men  (who  vnW  always  read  him  by  proxy)  than  his  pic- 
ture of  human  life  and  of  the  visible  sphere  of  man's  activities. 

Were  Homer  not  a  poet,  he  might  be  called  an  encyclo- 
paedist. Unobtrusive  there  lie  in  Iliad  and  Odyssey  materials 
for  the  study  of  an  entire  age  more  abundant  than  exist  in 
the  case  of  any  other  ancient  people,  the  Jews  alone  excepted. 
The  age  he  mirrors  was  an  age  of  justice  and  of  moral  feeling, 
though  law  and  morality  were  still  unborn.  It  was  an  age 
when  men  had  come  to  recognize  that  war  was  dreadful, 
and  yet  loved  battle;   and  no  one,  not  even  Tolstoi,  has 


48  GREEK  LITERATURE 

ever  pictured  war  with  the  vividness  of  Homer.  It  was 
an  age  when  man  turned  readily  to  God,  upon  whom  rested 
his  entire  dependence ;  when  the  primal  law  of  duty  was  to 
keep  thy  word,  to  honor  thy  father  and  thy  mother,  and  to 
show  mercy  to  the  beggar  and  the  suppliant  within  thy  gates. 
It  was  an  age  when  belief  in  the  visible  presence  of  his  gods 
brought  no  enfeeblement  of  endeavor,  but  rather  spurred  man 
to  a  completer  manifestation  of  his  humanity.  Labor  was 
still  noble.  The  spirit  of  generosity  was  abroad.  Women 
were  treated  with  a  chivalry  unknown  to  the  later  days  of 
paganism.  Insolence  and  lust  had  their  end  appointed  in 
the  divine  resentment.  It  was  the  age  when  men  were 
strong  and  brave,  and  instinctively  refined ;  and,  though 
uncheered  by  the  consolation  of  a  later  faith,  confronted  the 
thought  of  eternal  gloom  in  the  hereafter  with  a  resignation  ' 
born  neither  of  apathy  nor  of  despair. 

Upon  the  external  world  of  Homer  science  has  now  laid 
her  hand.  Iliad  and  Odyssey  have  become  the  quarry  of 
the  sociologist  and  anthropologist.  But  the  lover  of  poetry 
will  resist  an  appreciation  of  the  poet  which  discovers  his 
only  claim  to  permanence  in  the  fact  that  he  is  the  earliest 
literary  witness  to  the  life  of  man  in  Europe;  which  regis- 
ters with  equal  impartiality  the  boasting  of  Homer's  heroes 
and  the  Fijian  abuse  of  their  besieged  enemies,  and  equates 
in  the  cold  light  of  science  the  lamentation  over  Hector's 
corpse  uttered  by  "that  savage  woman"  Andromache,  with 
the  somersaults  of  a  newly  bereaved  wife  in  Queensland  and 
the  ceremonial  wailing  of  the  people  of  the  Zambezi. 

But  science  may  not  depoetize  a  dream.  To  the  sociolo- 
gist Homer  will  justly  remain  a  document  of  inestimable 
value;  but  to  a  larger  world  he  makes  appeal,  not  because 
he  provides  material  to  be  pigeonholed  into  Spencer's 
Sociology  or  Ratzel's  History  of  Mankind,  but  because  he 
views  human  life,  as  a  poet  views  it,  through  a  prism  that 
tints  the  world  with  golden  gleams. 


EPIC   POETRY  49 

And  as  a  poet  Homer's  permanence  is  insured  because 
of  his  unique  place  in  the  Uterature  of  the  world.  The  oldest 
monuments  of  European  poetry,  Iliad  and  Odyssey  are  akin 
both  to  the  ''popular"  epic  (if  one  must  retain  that  squinting 
expression)  and  to  the  literary  epic.  It  has  not  been  without 
a  struggle  that  criticism  has  attained  to  the  just  perspective 
of  their  position.  Two  centuries  ago  they  were  measured 
by  an  abstract  standard  of  literary  art  which  postulated  an 
ideal  model  capable  of  reproduction  in  any  language,  in  any 
nation,  and  in  any  age.  They  were  compared  directly  with 
the  Aeneid  and  Paradise  Lost,  as  if  Homer  was  the  poet 
of  a  mature  and  artificial  civilization.  A  century  ago  it 
was  an  axiom  of  the  critic  that  Homer  was  a  writer  of  ballad 
poetry. 

We  have  at  last  won  a  just  estimate  of  Iliad  and  Odyssey 
at  least  on  this  point.  The}^ are  neither  ballads  nor  "popular  " 
epics  like  the  Arthurian  and  Carlovingian  romances  or  the 
Nibelungenlied,  nor  are  they  immediately  comparable  to  the 
Aeneid,  the  Jerusalem  Delivered,  the  Divine  Comedy,  or  Para- 
dise Lost. 

To  the  "popular"  epic  they  are  related  because  they  are 
indigenous  and  appeal  to  the  spontaneous  sympathy  of  an 
entire  nation,  because  they  deal  with  events  that  had  won 
a  secure  place  in  the  national  imagination,  because  their 
heroes  embody  national  ideals,  because  the  utterance  of 
their  poet  is  undisturbed  by  the  pressure  of  personahty,  with 
its  passing  beliefs,  its  idiosyncrasies,  and  its  constant  inclina- 
tion to  force  to  the  front  the  dissonance  of  the  present  and  the 
past.  Furthermore,  Homer's  world  has  the  finality  of  self- 
completeness,  and  that  moral  harmony  which  displays  no 
discord  between  aspiration  and  achievement.  In  action, 
thought,  and  sentiment.  Homer  touches  common  life  closely, 
and  even  in  the  Odyssean  realm  of  fancy  the  human  clement 
preponderates  over  the  supernatural.  Homer,  again,  is 
"popular"  because  he  has  perfect  ease  and  grace  and  vivid- 


50  GREEK  LITERATURE 

ness,  because  he  has  amphtude  and  secures  totality  of  im- 
pression by  fullness  of  landscape.  Like  the  popular  epics, 
Homer  is  plain  in  thought  and  plain  in  style.  But,  unlike 
these  epics,  he  is  also  rapid,  and  he  is  above  all  noble. 

Iliad  and  Odyssey  are  the  compeers  of  the  great  literary 
epics  because  of  the  elevation  and  wide  sweep  of  the  mind 
of  their  poet,  because  of  their  pervasive  artistic  excellence 
in  which  the  nobility  of  the  style  answers  the  nobility  of 
human  nature,  and  because  of  their  abiding  and  quickening 
influence  on  those  "sane,  well-trained  minds  of  very  high 
calibre  whose  admiration  and  delight  (as  Matthew  Arnold 
said)  is  the  test  of  supreme  excellence  in  literature." 

The  heroic  epic  of  the  Greeks,  with  its  likeness  both  to 
the   Volksepos  and    to  the  literary  epic,   occupies  a  place 
peculiarly  its  own.     In  Greece  alone  the  epic,  as  an  artistic 
form  of  poetry,  came  first.     In  Greece  alone  the  poet  did  not 
have  to  balance  alternatives;    he  whom  the  Muses  inspired 
was  in  the  earliest  period  a  singer  of  heroic  lays,  in  the  next 
age  a  lyric  poet,  in  the  next  a  dramatist.     The  Greek  epic 
is  thus  isolated  not  only  because,  like  all  Greek  literature, 
it  is  untouched  by  foreign  influence,  but  also  because  it  is 
the  earliest  product  of  that  literature.     By  its  isolation  the 
Greek  epic  gains  its  supreme  originality  in  comparison  with 
all  later  poetry  which  lies  under  the  attraction  of  the  thoughts 
and  ways  of  thought  of  the  past.     Though  Homer  stands 
at  the  end  of  the  heroic  age,  in  the  freshness,  sincerity,  and 
vividness  with  which  he  views  the  many-colored  pageant 
of  human  life,  he  seems  almost  dissociated  from  any  past. 
For  his  sentiment  is  projected  warm  from  the  heart  of  a  race 
in  its  adolescence ;    his  words  express,  do  not  suggest ;    his 
thought  is  not  distilled,  does  not  build  any  fabric  of  its  own 
subtle  fancy.     Homer  does  not  bring  a  fruitage  of  ideas 
already  ripened  into  deeper  mellowness  because  they  have 
been  voiced  by  poets  of  the  past  and  enriched  by  the  expe- 
rience of  men  of  different  race  from  age  to  age.     He  is  un- 


EPIC  POETRY  51 

touched  by  the  sense  of  the  mysteries  of  things,  by  the  sense 
of  Hfe's  disharmonies  that  is  born  of  the  maturity  of  the  race 
of  men.  In  his  verse  there  is  none  of  that  proud  dignity 
that  lingers  in  the  steady  and  solemn  cadences  of  Virgil, 
the  hving  voice  of  Rome's  imperial  rule.  Alone  of  the  great 
epic  poets  of  the  world  he  has  not  gleaned  amid  "aUen  corn." 

Virgil  and  Dante  and  Milton  furnish  to  the  scholar  the 
refined  delight  of  discovering  the  contact  of  mind  with  mind 
in  associative  reminiscence.  But  if  Homer  lacks  this  charm, 
he  has  at  least  escaped  the  perils  of  indirectness  and  of  labored 
allusiveness.  The  leaves  which  typify  to  him  the  passing  of 
the  generations  of  men  are  not  strewn  to  his  fancy  in  some 
Greek  Vallombrosa.  Homer  displays  no  sense  of  the  con- 
scious effort  of  literary  craftsmanship ;  the  progress  of  his 
ideas  is  not  choked  by  undergrowths  of  thought ;  he  is  not 
subject  to  the  tyranny  of  a  style,  like  Milton's,  that  does 
not  give  ample  air  to  the  fullness  of  his  thought;  of  all  epic 
poets  he  is  freest  from  bad  ornament ;  and  he  never  shows 
that  lack  of  precision  in  sympathy  which  attends  the  study 
of  man  and  the  visible  world  through  books.  Virgil  looks 
at  both  through  Homer's  eyes;  he  does  not  recreate  in  his 
o\\Ti  soul  the  emotion  of  his  heroes  —  he  has  an  index  path- 
ologicus  made  up  chiefly  out  of  Homer.  Virgil  is,  too,  a 
courtier;  the  muse  of  Homer  keeps  her  gaze  level  in  the 
presence  of  the  great,  and  the  poet  is  merely  her  inter- 
preter. In  Dante  philosophy  is  striving  to  translate  thought 
into  sensible  form.  Milton  contemplates  human  life  with 
the  vision  of  a  priest. 

At  the  outset,  Greek  poetry  looks  with  the  keenness  of  a 
painter  directly  at  nature  and  at  man.  Ut  piciura  poesis 
is  pervasively  true  of  Homer,  who  sees  only  with  his  own 
eyes.  Scaliger,  in  scorn  of  the  poet,  says  that  he  describes 
the  felling  of  a  tree  as  if  he  were  a  carpenter ;  and  some 
Gorman  thinks  the  poet's  knowledge  of  human  anatomy  is 
such  that  he  must  have  been  an  army-surgeon.     With  what 


52  GREEK  LITERATURE 

nice  minuteness  he  observes  nature's  shifting  spectacle — the 
warring  of  the  winds ;  the  fury  of  the  tempest,  the  rocking 
ship,  and  the  angrj^  god  beneath  the  waves ;  the  roar  of  the 
torrent  heard  by  the  lonely  shepherd  on  the  hills ;  the  light 
that  flashed  from  Achilles's  spear  before  it  pierced  Hector  he 
Ukens  to  Hesperus,  "fairest  of  all  stars  set  in  heaven." 

Homer,  too,  foreshadows  the  national  conception  of  natural 
beauty,  which  found  greater  charm  in  the  loveliness  of 
meadow  and  stream  than  in  the  majestic  splendor  of  moun- 
tain heights  and  ocean.  To  Homer  nature  is  not  something 
distinct  from  man  in  the  sense  of  Rousseau.  He  does  not 
recognize  an  animate  and  an  inanimate  nature.  He  paints 
nature,  as  a  Greek  paints  it,  with  man  as  spectator  or  auditor 
of  her  sights  and  sounds ;  he  rarely  finds  in  nature  the  mirror 
of  man's  mental  state;  as  he  does  when  Patroclus  says  to 
Achilles:  "the  gray  sea  and  rugged  precipices  brought  thee 
forth,  for  rugged  is  thy  heart." 

The  Greek  poet  moves  by  preference  in  the  world  of  man. 
Homer  is  the  interpreter  of  the  Muse  in  whose  omniscience 
fact  and  fancy  have  already  merged  their  distinctive  out- 
lines ;  he  is  not  an  historian,  to  whom  events  are  of  prime 
value  while  their  human  agents  stand  in  the  second  line. 
Man  is  the  central  and  driving  force  in  Homer.  "Upon 
Homer's  hero  depends  his  world."  Virgil's  hero  shines  as 
the  divinely  appointed  founder  of  Rome,  and  his  every  action 
is  controlled  by  the  decrees  of  the  gods.  Tasso's  heroes 
shine  through  reflection  of  their  purpose  to  free  the  tomb  of 
Christ.  But  though  it  was  the  will  of  Zeus  that  Troy  should 
fall,  the  warriors  on  the  Trojan  plain  gain  no  individual 
lustre  through  their  joint  heroic  enterprise.  In  the  pan- 
orama of  the  moving  accidents  of  the  Odyssey,  in  all  the 
shifting  spectacle  of  dangers  and  enchantments,  it  is  what 
Odysseus  does  and  feels,  not  what  he  sees  and  hears,  that  is 
the  main  spring  of  interest.  The  external  world  is  there  for 
man,    not   man   for   the    external   world.      The  immortals 


EPIC   POETRY  53 

themselves  have  their  place  on  Oljinpus  or  on  Ida  or  beneath 
the  gray  sea  only  to  behold  the  action  that  is  the  expression 
of  the  will  of  man.  In  the  centre  of  things  is  man  swayed  by 
passion  and  unchecked  save  by  moral  restraint,  self-imposed, 
but  figured  as  obedience  to  the  promptings  of  the  divine 
regents  of  the  world.  In  this  human  sphere,  admitting  the 
verification  of  experience,  will  and  action  are  justified  by 
speech.  About  half  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  consists  of 
speeches;  with  good  reason  did  Plato  and  Aristotle  regard 
Homer  as  the  father  of  the  drama.  The  Iliad  excels  in  dra- 
matic energy,  the  Odyssey  in  picturesque  effect ;  but  in 
both  poems  it  is  dramatic  situation  that  gives  intense 
\itality  and  vividness  to  Homer's  men  and  women,  who  are 
all  creatures  of  flesh  and  blood,  and  embody  the  essential 
characteristics  of  human  nature.  Medea,  Dido,  Francesca 
da  Rimini,  Ugolino,  Rinaldo,  Roland,  Brunhilde,  Lear  and 
Lady  jNIacbeth  are  not  more  inalienable  possessions  of  the 
world's  imagination  than  Achilles,  Ajax,  Diomed,  Odysseus, 
Hector,  Paris,  Helen,  Penelope,  and  Nausicaa. 

It  is  Homer's  limitless  faculty  of  invention  that  gives  to 
the  denizens  of  his  human  sphere  such  varied  individual- 
ity. On  his  epic  scene  move  graybeards  and  youths,  maidens 
and  matrons,  the  innocent  and  the  wanton,  kings  and  beg- 
gars, princes  and  demagogues,  sages  and  satirists,  rebels 
and  faithful  vassals,  men  of  action  and  men  of  words  —  a 
great  assembly  of  the  differences  of  human  faculty  and  human 
estate  —  while  high  above  all  the  rest  towers  Peleus's 
matchless  son;  Odysseus,  undaunted  in  every  danger; 
Hector,  who  pardons  her  who  is  the  cause  of  his  ruin,  and  is 
the  ideal  of  the  pagan  hero  in  the  Christian  epic  ;  the  woman 
of  the  fatal  gift  of  beauty  who  gazes  with  shuddering  into 
the  vistas  of  memory;  and  that  other  wife,  unbetrayed  to 
surrender  of  her  constancy  by  twenty  long  years  of  watching 
and  waiting  for  the  home-coming  of  her  lord.  Above  and 
below  and  among  this  catholic  and  gracious  humanity  move 


54  GREEK  LITERATURE 

in  supremely  beautiful  and  august  forms  the  divine  incarna- 
tions of  majesty  and  grace,  dignity  and  loveliness,  wisdom 
and  strength. 

Homer's  characters  are  limned  only  in  outline  and  do 
not  appear  before  us  complete;  they  develop  as  we  watch 
their  attractions  and  repulsions,  perpetually  varying  in  their 
interrelations.  They  do  not,  like  Virgil's  heroes,  exist  for 
themselves  alone.  And  the  Greek  poet  knows  well  that  in 
literature  it  is  speech,  rather  than  description  of  action,  that 
serves  best  to  mark  the  distinctive  temper  of  individuality. 

All  Homer's  heroes,  save  only  Thersites,  are  brave.  But 
courage  has  its  spiritual  anatomy :  Agamemnon  and  Mene- 
laus  and  Ajax,  Idomeneus  and  Sarpedon  and  Hector,  are  all 
differently  brave.  Other  epic  poets  do  not  succeed  in  keep- 
ing Homer's  precision  of  rudimentary  outline  in  marking 
individuality.  Aeneas  is  an  aggregation  of  piety;  Sieg- 
fried is  an  aggregation  of  excellence.  No  Homeric  hero, 
except  perhaps  Diomed,  embodies  the  ideal  of  flawlessness 
inherent  in  the  romanticism  of  the  Frank  on  either  side  of 
the  Rhine.  Achilles  excels  all  the  rest  in  action  and  in 
speech.  He  burns  with  indignation  at  all  injustice  whether 
he  or  another  is  its  victim ;  but  he  is  seen  in  nature's  mirror, 
not  through  the  prism  of  idealism ;  he  discovers  a  momentary 
savagery  at  the  end  of  a  war  that  has  demoralized  society 
in  arms. 

The  men  and  women  of  Homer  are  our  heroized  selves,  and 
they  are  all,  save  only  Penelope  perhaps,  creatures  of  vigorous 
action.  The  range  of  their  action  is  as  varied  as  are  the 
incidents  that  crowd  the  canvas  of  the  poet.  Difficulties  and 
dangers  on  land  and  sea,  battle  in  countless  forms,  the  gentler 
scenes  of  peace  and  domestic  life,  move  before  our  eyes  in 
an  ever  shifting  panorama.  But  if  action  is  omnipresent 
and  lends  an  intensity  of  interest  that  enthralls  the  reader, 
no  less  significant  are  the  thoughts  and  sentiments  of  the 
actors  in  this  epic  drama.      Stirred  by  natural  passion  and 


EPIC   POETRY  55 

energy  and  weaponed  with  a  fine-tempered  language,  they 
speak  to  us  of  human  hfe  in  the  language  of  a  common  human- 
ity ;  and  whether  the  appeal  is  to  understanding  or  emotion, 
it  is  of  universal  human  interest.  Like  the  women  who  wail 
over  Patroclus,  "in  semblance  for  the  dead,  but  each  for  her 
own  misery,"  so  the  joys  and  sorrows  of  successive  ages  find 
individual  voice  in  the  joys  and  sorrows  of  Homer's  men  and 
women.  Though  the  poet  does  not  search  for  scenes  of 
tenderness  and  pity,  by  a  slightest  touch,  often  by  what  he 
leaves  unsaid,  he  sounds  the  chords  of  pathos;  when  the 
eyes  are  choked  with  tears  or  when  the  heart  is  aflame,  abso- 
lute simpHcity  surpasses  all  studied  craftsmanship. 

The  thoughts  and  sentiments  uttered  by  Homeric  person- 
ages are  compacted  of  a  general  experience ;  they  rouse  the 
spirit,  they  touch  the  heart,  they  inform  the  understanding ; 
they  have  the  note  of  eternity. 

"Dear  one,"  says  Hector  to  Andromache,  "I  praj^  thee 
not  to  be  of  oversorrowful  heart ;  no  man  against  my  fate 
shall  hurl  me  to  Hades ;  only  destiny,  I  ween,  no  man  hath 
ever  escaped,  be  he  coward  or  be  he  valiant,  when  once  he 
hath  been  born." 

Hector  and  his  wife  —  "the  stately  flower  of  perfect  wife- 
hood"— have  realized  the  substance  of  Odysseus's  prayer 
for  the  maiden  Nausicaa :  "And  may  the  gods  grant  thee 
all  thy  heart's  desire :  a  husband  and  a  home,  and  a  mind 
at  one  with  his  may  they  give  —  a  good  gift,  for  there  is  noth- 
ing mightier  and  nobler  than  when  man  and  wife  are  of  one 
heart  and  mind  in  a  house." 

In  the  presence  of  death  the  god  of  light  says  to  the  im- 
mortals:  "It  must  be  that  many  a  man  lose  even  some 
d(;arer  one  than  this,  his  very  own  brother  or  perchance 
a  son,  yet  bringcth  he  his  wailing  and  lamentation  to  an  end, 
for  an  enduring  heart  have  the  Fates  given  unto  men." 

When  Glaucus  has  been  accosted  by  Diomed  in  the  press 
of  buttle,  he  says:    "Son  of   Tydeus,  of   great  soul,  why 


56  GREEK  LITERATURE 

askest  thou  my  race  ?  Even  as  are  the  generations  of  leaves 
such  are  those  Ukewise  of  men ;  the  leaves  that  be  the  wind 
scattereth  over  the  earth,  and  the  forest  buddeth  and  put- 
teth  forth  more  again,  when  the  season  of  spring  is  at  hand ; 
so  of  the  generations  of  men  one  springeth  up  and  another 
passeth  away." 

In  the  fifth  Iliad  when  Diomed  has  routed  his  mortal  foes 
and  even  turns  to  encounter  Apollo,  he  is  rebuked :  "Desire 
not  to  match  thy  spirit  with  gods,  since  there  is  no  comparison 
of  the  race  of  immortal  gods  and  of  men  that  walk  upon  the 
earth." 

But  if  mortal  men  must  give  way  before  the  gods  whom 
they  revere,  they  are  never  marionettes  in  the  hands  of  the 
puissant  Olympians.  Man's  action  may  be  modified  or 
diverted  by  the  direct  influence  of  a  god ;  but  man's  will  is 
never  rudely  overborne  without  a  struggle,  never  destroyed 
by  divine  command.  Even  those  decisions  which  are  ap- 
parently suddenly  formed  on  the  appearance  of  a  god  are 
already  dormant  in  the  hero's  mind.  The  divine  epiphany 
is  only  the  external  sign  of  the  reaction  of  the  soul. 

As  to  the  gods  themselves,  though  Milton  may  regulate 
his  divine  mechanism  with  a  profounder  logic,  yet  Homer 
has  an  artistic  advantage  over  all  the  Christian  poets  in  the 
multiplicity  of  his  supernatural  beings,  as  he  has  also  in 
the  range  of  his  imagery.  The  sense  of  reality  of  Homer's 
divine  agents,  the  direct  and  visible  participants  in  human 
affairs,  lends  to  the  Greek  epic  a  sincerity  and  a  naturalness 
beyond  the  power  of  later  art  to  simulate.  For  the  gods  of 
Homer  are  virtually  men  in  whom  the  limits  of  human 
physical  finiteness  have  been  extended  or  men  freed  entirely 
from  these  Hmits.  If  they  are  therefore  less  awful  and  sub- 
lime than  the  supernatural  agents  of  other  poets,  they  are 
not  philosophical  or  theological  conceptions,  as  in  Virgil 
and  Milton,  which  have  taken  on  material  form  because  they 
were  otherwise  incapable  of  visualization. 


EPIC  POETRY  57 

But  we  may  not  demand  of  a  national  epic  impregnated 
with  the  Stoic  conception  of  the  world,  or.  of  epics  founded 
on  a  revealed  religion,  the  free  play  of  the  imaginative  instinct 
with  regard  to  the  divine  that  marks  the  adolescence  of  the 
Hellenic  race.  If  Homer's  themes  cannot  vie  in  implicit 
grandeur  with  Virgil's  or  Dante's  or  Tasso's  or  Milton's, 
it  is  also  to  be  borne  in  mind  that  it  is  not  (as  Arnold  re- 
minds us)  the  nature  of  their  subject  which  occasions  the  fine 
style  of  the  greatest  artists  in  words ;  as  it  is  also  not  the 
nature  of  their  theme  that  is  the  sole  sprii^g  of  their  ideas 

On  Man,  on  Nature  and  on  Human  Life. 

As  the  immortals  in  Homer  know  each  other  whenever 
they  meet  and  in  whatever  disguise,  so  the  greatest  poets 
of  the  world  are  akin,  whatever  their  theme.  It  is  Homer's 
province  to  depict  in  all  its  freshness  and  strength  and  beauty 
the  irrecoverable  youth  of  the  world,  to  trace  the  lineaments 
of  human  life  still  so  simplified  to  nature  that  it  rests  on  the 
primal  emotions  of  the  heart,  to  picture  an  astonishing  variety 
of  incident,  and  with  minute  precision  to  set  forth  abundant 
riches  of  human  experience,  to  catch  the  spirit  of  an  age,  and 
to  give  more  than  any  other  poet  of  the  Greeks  themselves 
the  very  essence  of  the  Greek  spirit. 

If  poetry  is  only  dreamland,  if  the  warring  Greeks  and 
Trojans  are  as  unsubstantial  as  Circe's  spells,  this  far-off 
poet  of  another  clime  sends  us  (as  do  our  growing  years) 
into  glad  exile  to  our  dreams. 

Herbert  Weir  Smyth. 


LYRIC   POETRY 

Difficult  as  it  is  to  summarize  aptly  the  character  of  Greek 
hterature  as  a  whole,  such  an  apergu  is  quite  as  hard  to  achieve 
for  one  of  its  most  interesting  parts,  the  lyric  poetry.  For 
this  poetry  is  the  product  of  many  regions  and  periods,  uses 
many  different  forms  of  Greek  language  to  express  itself, 
and  reveals  to  us  not  only  essential  tribal  peculiarities,  but 
also  the  marked  individuality  of  the  singer,  and  so  illustrates 
every  mood  of  the  Greek  mind.  The  strongest  contrast 
to  this  many-sidedness  of  the  lyric  is  afforded  by  the  drama 
and  oratory.  These,  un-Attic  as  their  beginnings  may  have 
been,  are  essentially  Attic  as  far  as  we  can  trace  them ;  the 
Greek  in  which  they  are  preserved  is  almost  exclusively  Attic, 
their  spirit  not  less  Athenian ;  and  the  period  within  which 
their  budding,  their  flowering,  and  the  beginning  of  their 
decay  may  be  watched  is  fairly  well  limited  to  the  two  cen- 
turies during  which  Athens  was  the  intellectual  leader  of 
Greece. 

But  for  a  thorough  study  of  the  Greek  lyric  poetry  one 
must  explore  every  highway  and  byway  of  the  literature; 
alike  the  earliest  epics  and  the  latest  writers  of  Byzantine 
times,  not  only  because  many  of  the  most  precious  remains  of 
the  lyric  are  embedded,  in  the  form  of  quotations,  in  the  later 
writings,  but  because  in  even  the  earliest  epic  we  hear  the 
echo  of  voices  of  a  still  remoter  age,  chanting  songs  of  rejoic- 
ing or  lament.  The  drama,  too,  contains  some  of  the  noblest 
productions  of  the  Hellenic  lyric  genius.  Nor  is  our  task 
wholly  done  when  the  literature  has  been  ransacked.  To 
comprehend  the  occasions  which  called  forth  much  of  the 

58 


LYRIC   POETRY  59 

Greek  song,  we  must  learn  to  know  Greek  manners  and  cus- 
toms, both  secular  and  religious.  There  was  hardly  an  occa- 
sion in  the  life  of  Greece  which  did  not  find  its  accompani- 
ment of  song.  The  language  itself  sang,  one  may  say  with 
little  exaggeration,  and  fondness  for  beauty  of  poetic  form 
was  innate  in  the  Hellenic  character.  The  matchless  remains 
of  the  lyric  left  us  by  the  greatest  poets  are  seen  to  have  been 
developed  out  of  popular  forms,  and  so,  with  all  their  elab- 
oration, to  have  kept  in  touch  with  the  life  of  the  nation  as  a 
whole.  If  I  may  repeat  a  comparison  used  in  a  recent  lec- 
ture, "it  is  everywhere  as  though  we  were  viewing  a  garden, 
the  flowers  in  which  are  only  better  bred  specimens  of  the 
sorts  to  be  found  all  about,  outside  the  wall."  Occasionally 
in  most  unexpected  places  we  come  upon  proof  of  the  keen- 
ness of  this  Greek  sense  of  form.  Here  and  there  a  broken 
stone  has  kept  faithful  record  of  a  touching  grief  or  an  honest 
pride  in  achievement,  sometimes  phrased  in  artistic  verse, 
sometimes  in  a  form  that  cannot  quite  reach  the  true  poetic 
grace  of  utterance.  For  example,  a  rudely  inscribed  stone 
found  some  fifteen  j^ears  ago  at  Eretria  in  Euboea  bears  the 
epitaph  of  a  sailor,  dating  from  perhaps  500  b.c,  which  may 
be  explained  as  the  affectionate  tribute  of  a  sorrowing  ship- 
mate. The  letters  begin  in  fairly  orderly  fashion,  but  at 
the  end  are  crowded  into  a  hopeless  tangle ;  some  of  the 
words  are  misspelled  ;  the  metre  is  very  faulty ;  but  the  epi- 
taph is  not  bad  poetry  for  all  that,  and  the  lyric  touch  of 
style  is  there.     It  reads  in  translation  :  — 

r  Here  Philo  lies ;   to  him  that  sailed  the  wave 
Earth  scanty  blessings  in  his  lifetime  gave, 
And  now  —  a  grave. 

The  study  of  Greek  lyric  is  very  largely  a  study  of  dis- 
jointed fragments.  In  no  part  of  the  literature  has  time 
worked  more  ruthless  havoc.  In  Symonds's  fine  comparison, 
the  fragments  preserved  are  like  the  islands  in  the  Aegean ; 


60  GREEK   LITERATURE 

we  know  they  are  but  the  summits  of  mountain-chains  that 
lie  hidden  far  below  the  surface  of  the  sea.  Much  of  the 
destruction  has  been  inevitable ;  but  it  is  hard  to  reconcile 
ourselves  to  the  burning  —  if  the  account  is  true  —  of  the 
Mss.  of  Alcaeus  and  Sappho  at  Rome  in  1073,  under  Pope 
Gregory  VII.  Bergk's  collection  of  the  lyric  poets,  exhaus- 
tive when  the  latest  edition  was  published  in  1882,  contains 
all  that  was  then  known  of  one  hundred  and  ten  poets,  many 
of  whom  stand  but  as  shadows  of  mighty  names,  and  numer- 
ous fragments  that  were  anonymous  even  to  the  scholars 
of  Alexandria  and  Rome.  Classical  scholars  await  with 
impatience  each  new  publication  of  papyri  discovered  in 
Egyptian  tombs,  for  these,  among  thousands  of  documents 
and  letters,  now  and  then  yield  a  precious  bit  of  literature, 
although  very  rarely  anything  of  such  extent  or  importance 
as  the  unique  ms.  of  Bacchylides  discovered  in  1896.  Only 
four  lyric  poets,  Theognis,  Pindar,  BacchyUdes,  and  Timo- 
theus,  have  come  down  to  us  through  the  medium  of  individ- 
ual MSS.,  if  we  except  a  few  brief  fragments  rescued  from 
papyri,  among  which  are  some  of  Sappho,  some  of  Alcaeus, 
some  of  Corinna,  and  a  splendid  one  which  has  with  great 
probabihty  been  assigned  to  Archilochus.  But  in  the  main 
it  is  nearly  as  true  as  it  was  thirty  years  ago  that  we  know 
the  Greek  lyric  poets,  Theognis,  Pindar,  and  Bacchylides  ex- 
cepted, only  from  quotation  in  later  writers. 

One  kind  of  quotation,  naturally  the  least  satisfactory, 
is  where  single  words  or  brief  phrases  have  been  preserved 
by  compilers  of  obsolete  or  poetical  expressions,  writers  on 
grammar  and  dialect,  makers  of  books  of  reference ;  of  such 
we  have  hundreds,  and  any  such  stray  notice  may  one  day 
enable  us  to  identify  a  new  fragment  of  importance.  Iden- 
tification is  possible  only  because  some  scholar  recognizes 
in  the  deciphered  text  something  —  it  may  be  a  passage  of 
considerable  length  or  merely  a  few  words  —  that  he  had 
seen  elsewhere.     Thus  a  fragment  of  over  one  hundred  and 


LYRIC   POETRY  61 

thirty  lines  (some  of  them  mutilated  beyond  recognition), 
found  in  1855,  was  recognized  as  part  of  a  poem  by  Alcman 
because  one  of  the  lines,  almost  meaningless  by  itself,  had 
been  quoted  by  an  ancient  commentator  on  Homer. 

Or  the  quotation  may  be  of  one  or  more  verses  adduced 
to  illustrate  metrical  principles  or  theories.  A  great  pro- 
portion of  what  we  know  of  Sappho  has  come  to  us  in  one 
or  the  other  of  these  ways.  The  fragment  in  which  a  late- 
marrying  girl  is  compared  to  the  apple  on  the  topmost 
bough  :  "Like  the  sweet  apple  that  blushes  on  the  top  bough, 
atop  of  the  topmost,  and  the  apple-gatherers  forgot  it  —  no, 
not  forgot  it,  but  could  not  reach  it "  —  these  exquisite  lines 
are  quoted  merely  to  illustrate  the  word  for  the  so-called 
"sweet-apple,"  i.e.  an  apple  grown  by  grafting  on  a  quince- 
tree.  It  is  a  most  tantalizing  mode  of  citation,  often  break- 
ing off  short  in  the  middle  of  a  phrase ;  quite  as  if  we  had 
to  form  a  judgment  of  an  English  poet  from  a  single  torn 
page  containing  a  part  of  the  "Table  of  First  Lines."  To 
take  another  instance,  we  know  from  various  sources  that 
Timocreon  of  Rhodes  wrote  most  bitter  attacks  upon  his 
contemporaries  Themistocles  and  Simonides,  with  the  latter 
of  whom  he  seems  to  have  carried  on  a  lively  controversy. 
A  writer  on  metric  quotes  the  beginning  of  a  poem  by  him 
written  in  a  particularly  sarcastic  and  mocking  measure,  as 
follows  (it  is  hard  to  read  it  without  singing  it) :  — 

2i/ceX6s  KOfx\f/bs  dvrjp  <^  ^ vy  w  

ttotI  Tav  fxar^p  icpa  Ky  kj v^  ^^  

"A  pretty  man  of  Sicily  said  to  his  mother — "  and  there  he 
stops.  It  is  a  most  promising  opening  for  a  satirical  poem, 
but  probably  we  shall  never  hear  what  the  mother  heard. 
Simonides  is  known  to  have  spent  the  last  years  of  his  Hfe 
in  Sicily;  and  those  who  enjoy  guessing  may  perhaps  imag- 
ine here  the  beginning  of  a  lampoon  upon  him,  describing 
the  effect  of  his  personality  upon  some  Sicilian  dandy. 


62  GREEK  LITERATURE 

But  the  pointing  of  morals  and  the  adorning  of  tales  have 
preserved  to  our  use  and  profit  the  greatest  number  of  scraps 
of  the  classical  lyric.  To  Plutarch,  Strabo,  Athenaeus,  and 
others,  including  several  Fathers  of  the  Church,  we  owe  most 
of  the  lyric  fragments  that  we  possess.  The  two  best  pieces 
of  Sappho  have  been  saved  to  us  by  the  rhetoricians  Dio- 
nysius  of  Halicarnassus  and  the  so-called  Longinus,  author  of 
the  famous  treatise  "On  the  Sublime."^ 

It  has  long  been  a  commonplace  of  Greek  literary  history 
that  until  late  Alexandrian  times  the  Greeks  used  no  satis- 
factory comprehensive  term  for  what  has  ever  since  then 
been  styled  "lyric"  poetry.  This  want  was  undoubtedly 
due  to  the  extreme  variety  of  the  classes  of  poems  which 
could  not  be  included  under  the  epic  or  the  drama.  These 
were  well-marked  divisions  of  poetry,   many  as  their  sub- 

'  An  interesting  but  difBcult  question,  for  the  solution  of  which  the  evi- 
dence is  very  incomplete,  is  whether  tradition  is  correct  in  ascribing  to 
Alexandrian  scholars  the  formation  of  a  "canon"  or  model  collection  of  the 
nine  best  lyric  poets  of  the  classical  period.  The  eariiest  datable  direct 
references  to  these  nine  poets  as  forming  a  class  by  themselves  are  found 
in  a  passage  of  Seneca  (about  the  middle  of  the  first  century  after  Christ), 
in  Petronius  (about  the  same  time),  and  in  Quintilian,  towards  the  end  of 
the  same  century.  But  when  Horace,  in  the  ode  prefixed  to  the  collection 
which  he  dedicated  to  Maecenas  in  the  year  23  B.C.,  at  the  age  of  42,  expresses 
the  hope  that  he  too  may  be  counted  among  the  lyrici  vatcs,  he  is  probably 
alluding  to  a  universally  recognized  group.  An  epigram  in  the  Greek 
Anthology  (A.  P.  ix.  184)  invokes,  also  as  though  forming  a  group  by  them- 
selves, the  same  nine  poets  that  make  up  the  so-called  "Alexandrian  Canon  "  ; 
"be  gracious,"  the  author  says,  "ye  that  form  the  beginning  and  the  end 
of  all  lyric."  But  unfortunately  author  and  date  of  the  epigram  are  un- 
known. It  may  go  back  to  about  200  B.C.,  and  thus  form  an  indirect  proof 
of  the  existence  of  the  Canon  at  that  time.  About  eleven  years  ago  Wila- 
mowitz-Moellendorff,  in  an  elaborate  essay,  tried  to  prove  that  these  nine 
poets,  far  from  having  been  put  into  a  class  by  themselves  as  representing 
the  highest  degree  and  standard  of  excellence,  were  in  fact  the  only  ones 
whose  works  had  survived  the  destruction  of  time  down  to  the  third  century 
before  Christ.  Though  backed  by  Wilamowitz's  extraordinary  learning 
and  acuteness,  the  theory  can  hardly  be  regarded  as  proved.  Such  whole- 
sale destruction  of  the  older  literature,  by  300  or  250  b.c,  as  it  implies,  has 
not  yet  been  made  credible. 


LYRIC  POETRY  63 

divisions  might  be ;  but  the  inclusion  of  all  other  kinds  into 
one  group  offered  many  difficulties.  The  most  that  could 
be  said  in  common  of  them  was  that  they  were  neither  epic 
nor  dramatic ;  very  much  as,  in  the  field  of  Greek  dialec- 
tology, everything  was  "Aeolic"  that  was  neither  Ionic  nor 
Doric. 

The  term  "lyric,"  which  seems  to  have  been  first  used  in 
this  connection  about  100  B.C.,  is  literally  too  broad,  for 
it  should  mean  "sung  to  the  lyre,"  and  if  pressed  should 
include  the  epic,  which  originally  was  doubtless  always 
chanted  with  that  accompaniment ;  and  it  should  exclude 
the  whole  body  of  elegiac  poetry,  a  very  extensive  and  impor- 
tant development  in  the  history  of  Greek  lyric,  which  was  at 
first  intoned  or  chanted  with  an  accompaniment  of  the  flute. 
Another  name  much  used  is  "melic"  poetry;  ^eXt/<^  TrotV^o-ts 
is  poetry  that  is  "articulated,"  that  is,  divided  into  members, 
or  stanzas,  not  composed  in  verses  of  identical  structure 
following  one  another  to  any  desired  extent.  But  fortu- 
nately convenience  prevailed  over  etymological  consistency, 
and  the  two  expressions  have  become  fairly  well  fixed  in 
literary  usage.  I  shall  here  employ  them  in  the  sense  often- 
est  given  them:  "lyric"  will  be  the  wider  term,  including 
first  the  elegiac  and  the  iambic  verse,  which  in  historical 
times  came  to  be  recited  or  declaimed,  no  longer  chanted ; 
and,  secondly,  the  many  varieties  of  "melic"  poetry  which 
among  Greek  people  in  the  classical  period  (whatever  the 
Roman  usage  may  have  been)  were  always  composed  as 
songs. 

The  various  forms  of  Greek  lyric  poetry,  in  particular 
of  melic  poetry,  are  unintelligible  except  as  connected  with 
music.  The  "book-lyric"  simply  did  not  exist  before  Alex- 
andrian times;  and  to  attempt  a  judgment  of  Greek  lyric 
upon  principles  applicable  to  the  Roman  is  infallibly  to  go 
far  astray.  There  was  no  such  "publication"  of  poetry 
in  the  Greek  towns  of  600  or  500  b.c.  as  was  possible  in  the 


64  GREEK   LITERATURE 

Rome  of  Augustus,  and  no  such  ''reading  public."  In  fact, 
it  seems  unlikely  that  any  two  copies  of  a  text  of  Sappho's 
poems,  current  a  few  years  after  her  death,  were  exactly 
alike,  as  copies  of  one  and  the  same  edition  of  a  book  pro- 
duced by  the  mechanical  process  of  printing  are  exactly 
alike  to-day.  Perhaps  no  two  early  mss.  included  exactly 
the  same  pieces. 

The  musical  forms  upon  which  the  lyric  verse-structure 
is  based  were  in  their  origin  probably  dance-measures,  or 
mostly  so,  and  the  whole  choral  lyric,  throughout  its  history, 
remains  in  close  touch  with  the  dance. 

It  is  equally  important  to  remember  that  all  Greek  lyric 
is  essentially  "occasional  poetry"  in  the  best  sense,  i.e. 
verse  produced  for  special  occasions,  and  preserved,  if  at 
all,  because  it  was  thought  to  be  worth  preserving.  For 
every  piece  thus  saved,  hundreds  of  others  must  have  been 
soon  forgotten.  It  is  characteristic  of  the  Greek  view  of 
"literature"  that  only  that  which  had  been  carefully  worked 
out,  according  to  a  definite  plan,  was  regarded  as  really 
worth  while.  A  stray  line  from  Critias,  the  contemporary 
and  friend  of  Socrates,  says :  — 

"more  are  wise  by  training  than  by  nature."     Goethe's 

Ein  guter  Mensch  in  seinem  dunklen  Drange 
1st  sich  des  rechten  Weges  wohl  bewusst 

is  altogether  at  variance  with  the  Greek  view.^ 

The  occasions  for  which  lyric  poetry  was  composed  were 
of  every  conceivable  kind.  With  the  fondness  for  pigeon- 
holing which  was  characteristic  of  them,  the  literary  his- 
torians of  antiquity  undertook  to  classify  the  vast  number 

•  1  Aristotle,  indeed,  saya  (Poetics,  ch.  17) :  5t6  ev(pvovs  17  ttoitjtiki^  (cttiv  f) 
IxavLKov,  "Hence  poetry  implies  either  a  happy  gift  of  nature  or  a  strain  of 
madness"  (Butcher's  transl.)  ;  but  Aristotle  would  probably  have  been  the 
last  to  maintain  that  the  eixpvrjs  or  the  fiaviKds  did  not  need  fieX^rr), 


LYRIC  POETRY  65 

of  songs  and  poems  then  accessible  according  to  the  purposes 
for  which  they  were  composed.  One  such  classification  we 
still  have.  Though  undoubtedly  based  on  earlier  formula- 
tions, it  comes  to  us  from  the  third  century  after  Christ; 
and  even  so,  indirectly  and  incompletely,  being  known  only 
from  copious  extracts  made  from  it  six  hundred  years  later. 
The  classification  is  not  exhaustive,  and  not  wholly  satis- 
factory even  as  far  as  it  goes.  It  mentions  twenty-one  kinds 
of  "melic  poems,"  named  according  to  the  occasions  for 
which  they  were  written.  By  no  means  all  of  them  are 
represented  by  existing  fragments.  Some  of  the  most  im- 
portant of  them  are  :  The  Hymn ;  the  Prosodion,  or  Proces- 
sional ;  the  Paean,  mostly  a  song  of  thanksgiving  or  praise ; 
the  Dithyramb,  sung  in  honor  of  Dionysus;  the  Nome, 
a  form  of  composition  of  great  elaborateness,  sometimes 
entirely  instrumental  and  so  lying  beyond  the  boundary  of 
poetry,  but  generally  comprising  a  text  of  complicated 
structure ;  the  Enkomion,  or  Laudation ;  the  Epinikion,  or 
Song  of  Victory ;  the  Skolion,  or  Drinking  Song  —  a  very 
large  and  important  class;  the  Wedding  Song;  and  the 
Partheneion,  or  Chorus  of  Girls. 

Of  all  these  the  Epinikion  is  best  known  to  us,  chiefly  from 
Pindar,  of  whose  odes  of  victory  over  forty  have  come  down 
to  us,  and  from  Bacchylides ;  we  have  a  fairly  good  specimen 
of  a  Dithyramb  of  the  later  type,  by  Timotheus;  some 
examples  of  the  Skolia ;  and  a  very  interesting  fragment  of 
a  Partheneion  by  Alcman.  Of  many  of  the  other  kinds  we 
have  brief  fragments.  We  owe  the  preservation  of  many 
pieces  and  fragments  to  the  custom  of  singing  at  feasts. 
Favorite  poems  were  included  in  collections  made  for  purely 
practical  use  as  song-books. 

Another  principle  of  classification  must  be  noticed,  of 
equal  importance  with  that  just  mentioned,  in  fact  to  a 
certain  extent  implied  in  it :  that  which  divides  the  poems 
of  Greek  lyric  into  poems  intended  for  a  single  voice,  whether 


66  GREEK   LITERATURE 

to  be  intoned  or  sung,  and  those  intended  for  a  chorus,  which 
could  only  be  sung.  The  first  great  group  again  separates 
itself  naturally  into  three :  (l)  poems  in  the  elegiac  distich, 
i.e.  a  dactylic  hexameter  followed  by  a  so-called  pentameter ; 
(2)  poems  in  the  various  iambic  measures,  whether  in  iambic 
trimeters  repeated  ad  libitum  or  in  other  and  more  com- 
phcated  forms;  and  (3)  the  "individual  lyric"  of  Lesbos 
and  Ionia,  as  represented  by  Alcaeus,  Sappho,  and  Anacreon, 
in  a  great  variety  of  metres.  The  forms  included  under 
(1)  and  (2)  underwent  such  elaborate  development  as  to 
constitute  in  effect  a  separate  division  of  poetry,  which 
soon  came  to  be  sharply  differentiated  from  poetry  of  the 
third  type  or  Lesbian  and  Ionic  melic.  The  connection  of 
elegiac  and  iambic  poetry  with  music  grew  slighter  and 
slighter,  until  finally  it  was  given  up,  the  verses  being 
henceforth  merely  recited. 

Those  who  are  unfamiliar  with  Greek  poetry  at  first  hand 
may  not  unnaturally  ask  why  it  should  be  classified  in  this 
way ;  why  according  to  the  metre  ?  The  answer  (of  prime 
importance  for  the  history  of  Greek  literature)  is  this :  cer- 
tain forms  of  verse  became  intimately  associated  with  certain 
types  of  literature,  often  to  the  exclusion  of  other  forms.  The 
close  correspondence  —  so  dear  to  the  Greek  heart  —  between 
matter  and  form  is  seen  to  particular  advantage  in  this 
field  of  the  literature.  Again,  while  many  poets  are  known 
to  have  used  many  forms  of  verse  (as  we  should  naturally 
expect  them  to  do),  there  was  always  some  one  field  of  poetry 
•in  which  each  one  was  particularly  at  home.  Probably 
most  Greek  poets  tried  their  hand  at  the  elegiac  distich  after 
it  had  become  popular,  but  Simonides  is  the  first  poet  of  the 
choral  lyric  of  whom  this  is  definitely  known.  He  was  par- 
ticularly skilful  in  the  epigram,  but  we  do  not  find  that  he 
composed  longer  poems  in  elegiac  measure ;  nor  does  the 
tragic  writer  produce  comedies,  or  the  prose-writer  poetry 
of  any  kind,  in  the  best  period,  if  we  except  the  genial  jack- 


LYRIC  POETRY  67 

of-all-trades  Ion.  Aristotle,  indeed,  achieved  an  ode  to 
"Virtue"  or  ''Excellence,"  but  it  is  very  mechanical  poetry, 
and  one  wonders  if  it  was  merely  chance  that  led  Professor 
Smyth,  in  his  edition  of  the  Greek  Melic  Poets,  to  print 
immediately  after  Aristotle's  ode  a  brief  fragment  of  unknown 
origin,  which  says  :  "The  gifts  of  the  Muses  are  to  be  won  by 
hard  struggle ;  they  lie  not  before  us,  for  the  first  comer  to 
carry  off."  No  less  than  thirty-three  epigrams,  some  of 
them  very  beautiful,  are  ascribed  to  Plato,  but  the  evidence 
is  all  against  his  authorship  of  them,  though  Mackail  has 
accepted  some  half  dozen  of  them  as  genuine. 

Elegiac  and  iambic  poetry  play  so  important  a  role  lin 
Greek  civilization  during  more  than  two  centuries  as  to 
demand  a  somewhat  fuller  examination  at  this  point.  We 
must  remember  that  prose,  as  an  artistic  literary  prod- 
uct, is  distinctly  of  late  date  in  Greek  literary  history. 
Before  450  B.C.  there  was  no  such  thing  as  prose  put  to- 
gether according  to  definite  principles  of  style.  The  two 
great  literary  achievements  of  the  fifth  century  were  the 
marvelous  development  of  the  drama  and  the  creation 
of  a  serviceable  prose  style.  But  after  the  decay  of  the 
epic,  which  we  may  roughly  say  to  have  begun  about  700, 
follow  two  centuries  crowded  with  momentous  happenings 
in  the  Greek  world.  They  form  the  period  of  transition 
from  older  forms  of  political  society,  intensely  aristocratic 
in  character,  to  democratic  states,  through  the  middle  stage 
of  tyrannies  or  petty  despotisms ;  and  the  period  of  coloni- 
zation, when  city  after  city  of  the  Aegean  circuit,  crowded 
and  turbulent  at  home  and  in  many  cases  hard  pressed  by 
the  growing  empires  of  Asia,  sent  out  bands  of  its  o^\^l  people 
to  plant  the  seed  of  civilization  in  distant  Mediterranean 
or  Euxine  lands.  Under  such  conditions  the  exclusive  privi- 
leges of  a  ruling  class  were  quickly  curtailed ;  the  man  of 
ability  and  enterprise,  of  "push,"  found  his  opi)ortunity. 
He  found  it  through  the  influence  which  he  could  exert  upon 


68  GREEK  LITERATURE 

his  fellow-men,  and  that  depended  largely  upon  his  power 
of  speech.  The  art  of  writing,  though  of  course  constantly 
practised,  was  still  used  chiefly  for  commercial  and  official 
purposes.  The  number  of  copies  in  circulation  of  any  poem 
must  have  been  extremely  small,  and  even  these  were  as 
a  rule  read  aloud  or  used  as  aids  to  memorizing  for  reci- 
tation. 

These  conditions  necessitated  the  development  of  a  style 
easily  memorized  and  understood.  The  vast  popularity  of 
the  epic  poetry  and  the  general  intelligibility  of  the  artificial 
language  in  which  it  was  composed  gave  not  only  a  suggestion 
of  the  kind  of  literary  medium  to  be  employed,  but  also  the 
material  out  of  which  it  might  be  fashioned.  The  new  form 
of  verse  thus  produced,  the  elegiac  distich,  was  at  once  singu- 
larly flexible  and  forcible.  So  well  did  it  fulfil  its  purpose 
that  for  at  least  two  hundred  years  it  continued  to  be  the 
chief  medium  of  formal  communication  of  ideas.  It  was  in 
effect  the  prose  of  Greek  literature  down  to  the  fifth  century, 
and  the  vehicle  of  expression  for  one  phase  after  another 
of  intellectual  activity.  The  patriotic  exhortations  of  Tyr- 
taeus,  the  plaintive  sentimentality  of  the  love-sick  Mimner- 
mus,  many  of  the  stirring  political  manifestos  of  Solon,  the 
bold  ethical  and  philosophical  innovations  of  Xenophanes, 
and  much  else  of  very  diverse  character — all  these  found 
in  the  elegiac  measure  an  effective  medium  of  expression.  It 
gained  a  practical  monopoly  in  the  field  of  terse  and  pithy 
utterance,  in  particular  serving  for  the  composition  of 
"epigrams"  of  every  kind;  it  maintained  itself  in  undimin- 
ished popularity  into  the  latest  period  of  Greek  litera- 
ture, and  met  no  less  successfully  the  needs  of  Latin 
poetry. 

This  elegiac  verse  came  from  above,  from  the  hallowed 
and  dignified  hexameter  verse  of  the  epic.  Not  so  the  second 
variety  of  monodic  IjtIc,  the  iambic  and  its  congeners  the 
trochaic   and  trochaic-dactylic   verse,   the   development   of 


LYRIC  POETRY  69 

all  of  which  runs  parallel  with  that  of  the  elegy.  In  the  very 
beginning  of  the  post-epic  period,  let  us  say  about  660  b.c, 
a  flaming  meteor  appears  in  the  literary  sky :  Archilochus  of 
Paros.  Of  mixed  descent,  partly  noble  and  partly  of  exceed- 
ingly humble  birth ;  a  soldier  of  fortune,  intensely  passion- 
ate of  temper,  with  an  extreme  frankness  of  self -revelation 
and  unfailing  sense  of  literary  form,  commanding  a  vocabu- 
lary of  the  greatest  variety,  he  is  known  to  us  through  frag- 
ments of  a  power  and  beauty  that  reveal  him  as  an  artist 
of  the  first  rank.  Of  all  the  Greek  voices  that  we  hear  as 
one  hears  a  distant  singer  in  the  night,  when  brief  snatches 
of  melody  come  we  know  not  whence,  no  tones  are  more 
thriUing  than  those  of  Archilochus.  The  fragments  show 
us  as  though  by  brief  lightning  flashes  the  ups  and  downs 
of  the  turbulent  life  of  the  man-at-arms  who  was  unlucky  in 
love  and  apparently  none  too  fortunate  in  anything  else. 
The  episode  of  his  final  rejection  by  Neobule,  daughter  of 
a  well-to-do  Parian,  who  had  at  first  encouraged  his  suit, 
became  one  of  the  most  famous  in  literary  history,  even  if 
we  need  not  believe  that  his  beloved  was  goaded  to  suicide 
by  the  fierce  iambics  which  the  discarded  suitor  launched  at 
her.  The  most  beautiful  as  well  as  the  bitterest  verses  of 
Archilochus  that  we  have  refer  to  this  experience;  "it  is 
the  first  time  in  Greek  literature  —  perhaps  in  the  literature 
of  the  world  —  that  the  whole  gamut  of  such  emotions  finds 
literary  expression,"  says  Crusius.  Archilochus  used  the 
elegiac  verse  in  many  poems,  some  of  them  of  great  dignity, 
as,  for  instance,  the  restrained  lament  for  some  friends  lost  at 
sea,  coupled  with  an  exhortation  to  courage  and  endurance 
under  adversity.  But  his  real  strength  must  have  lain  in  his 
iambic  and  trochaic  verses,  which  show  an  extraordinary 
variety  of  metrical  treatment.  The  forms  are  evidently 
elaborations,  worked  out  with  the  greatest  care  and  exact- 
ness, with  unerring  adroitness  and  skill,  of  popular  types 
of  verse  which  may  have  been  in  use  for  generations  before 


70  GREEK  LITERATURE 

his  time.     One  of  the  best  is  the  exhortation  to  his  own  soul 
in  time  of  distress  :  — 

Soul,  my  soul,  with  troubles  hopeless  sore  distressed,  lift  up  thy 

head  ! 
Boldly  fronting  them  that  hate  thee,  have  of  ambushed  foe  no 

dread. 
Boast  not  in  the  time  of  triumph  ;   beaten,  sink  not  in  distress, 
House-bound,  prostrate  and  lamenting ;  take  thy  joy  of  happiness ; 
Grieve  at  griefs ;  yet  all  in  measure ;  ever  keep  before  thy  mind 
What  a  tide  of  changes,  chances,  whirls  about  our  human  kind  ! 

In  1898,  among  some  papyri  now  in  Strassburg,  were  found 
two  scraps  of  a  MS.  written  probably  eight  hundred  years 
after  Archilochus.  The  larger,  only  a  few  inches  square, 
contains  fourteen  fairly  legible  lines  of  poetry,  the  smaller 
ten,  both  in  a  metre  which  occurs  among  the  fragments  of 
Archilochus.  The  language,  too,  and  the  exceedingly  pol- 
ished versification,  remind  us  of  him,  and  it  is  highly  probable 
that  this  chance  find  has  restored  to  us  two  more  specimens 
of  his  verse.  Only  the  longer  one  need  be  discussed  here. 
It  breathes  the  fervent  wish  that  misfortune  may  befall  some 
one  (not  to  be  identified  from  the  fragment) ;  that  he  may 
be  shipwrecked  on  the  coast  of  Thrace  at  Salmydessus,  a 
particularly  dangerous  and  savage  part  of  the  Euxine.  The 
lines,  omitting  the  first  few  words  of  the  fragment,  which 
form  the  end  of  a  sentence,  run  as  follows :  — 

At  Salmydessus  may  the  wild-haired  Thracians  give  to  him  a 
joyous  welcome  —  how  his  cup  of  woe  shall  be  full  as  he  eats  the 
bread  of  slavery !  —  to  him  naked  and  stiff  with  the  cold  ;  and  may 
abundant  seaweed,  cast  out  of  the  surge,  hold  him  fast ;  may  his 
teeth  chatter  as  he  lies  dog-like  on  his  face  in  helplessness,  on  the 
shore's  edge,  close  to  the  waves.  Such  a  sight  may  I  see,  for  that 
he  has  wronged  me  and  trampled  under  foot  his  oaths  —  he  that 
aforetime  was  my  friend  ! 

We  may  well  imagine  Archilochus  paying  his  compli- 
ments in  this  fashion  to  Lycambes,  father  of  his  beloved 


LYRIC   POETRY  71 

Neobule.  The  savage  Tenth  Epode  of  Horace  is  very  likely 
to  have  been  modelled  on  this  poem  —  another  possible 
indication  of  tlie  authorship  of  the  Greek  fragment.  Who- 
ever the  object  of  the  poet's  wrath  may  be,  shipwreck  is 
wished  for  him,  but  not  death,  rather  a  fate  far  worse  —  slav- 
ery among  the  barbarous  Thracians ;  whereas  Horace  prays 
for  a  violent  death  for  Mevius,  and  promises  thank-offerings 
if  this  comes  about. 

To  turn  Greek  iambics  and  trochaics  into  the  same  metres 
in  English  is  humanly  possible  without  great  loss  of  the 
rhythmic  effect ;  but  to  do  this  with  the  more  strictly  lyric 
measures,  or  even  dactylic  hexameters  or  elegiac  verse,  is 
practically  impossible,  because  the  phonetic  quality  of  the 
two  languages  is  so  different.  Swinburne  in  his  imitations 
of  Sappho  has  wrung  much  of  the  harshness  out  of  our  own 
speech,  and  come  nearer  to  the  letter  as  well  as  the  spirit  of 
the  original ;  but  every  verse  is  a  labored  tour  cle  force,  and 
as  unnatural  in  English  as  such  smoothness  is  natural  to 
the  Greek.  No  language  of  Germanic  type  in  the  stage  of 
development  which  it  has  nowadaj^s  reached  is  metrically 
or  musically  phonetic  in  the  way  in  which  ancient  Greek 
must  have  been.  The  proportion  of  vowels  was  much 
greater  in  Greek,  their  "color"  much  clearer,  the  metrical 
value,  that  is,  the  time-value,  of  syllables  much  more  accu- 
rately developed.  Italian  verse  makes  an  impression  upon 
the  ear  which  seems  to  me  likely  to  reproduce  many  more 
characteristics  of  ancient  Greek  verse  than  English  poetry  can 
imaginably  do.  French  is  better  than  English  in  this  respect, 
but  German,  with  the  power  and  grace  of  the  elephant,  is 
generally  worse.  It  is  most  instructive  to  take  up  such  a 
collection  of  fragments  as  Wharton's  edition  of  Sappho, 
where,  besides  the  literal  translation  of  each  one,  we  find  met- 
rical versions  of  some  of  the  most  famous.  In  every  case, 
one  may  say,  the  renderings  are  "padded"  to  make  them  even 
approximate  the  measures  of  the  Greek.     But  for  that  matter, 


72  GREEK  LITERATURE 

who  has  ever  quite  succeeded  with  Heine's  Du  hist  wie  eine 
Blume  —  the  simplest  piece  of  verse  imaginable?  In  fact, 
the  simpler,  the  more  direct,  the  original,  the  worse  for  the 
translator.     Traduttore  traditore} 

In  his  metrical  achievements  no  less  than  in  the  tone  of 
his  satire  and  invective,  Archilochus  is  the  direct  ancestor 
of  Attic  comedy;  and  he  proved  an  inexhaustible  mine  to 
the  Roman  poets,  who  drew  from  him  the  metrical  models 
which  they  reproduced  with  such  astonishing  fidelity,  in  a 
language  by  no  means  closely  like  the  Greek  in  metrical 
character.  The  Greek  that  Archilochus  heard  spoken  around 
him  every  day  was  already  largely  shaped  to  poetical  use ; 
but  the  Latin  spoken  in  the  streets  of  Rome  must  have  con- 
tained relatively  few  cadences  that  inspired  Horace  to  im- 
mortalize them  in  the  numbers  of  his  great  predecessor. 

Before  passing  to  the  third  division  of  the  individual  lyric, 
the  poetry  of  Alcaeus,  Sappho,  and  Anacreon,  which  forms 
at  the  same  time  the  first  division  of  what  we  have  agreed 
to  call  the  "mehc"  poetry,  we  should  glance  at  a  particu- 
larly interesting  variety  of  the  lyric,  one  which  includes  not 
only  many  poems  of  elegiac  and  iambic  type,  but  also,  prob- 
abl}^,  most  of  those  of  Alcaeus  and  Anacreon,  and  some  that 
have  been  generally  classed  with  the  choral  lyric.  I  refer  to 
the  sympotic  poetry,  including  the  Skolia  —  poems  composed 
to  be  sung  at  feasts  or  in  many  cases  composed  extempo- 
raneously at  such  gatherings.  At  the  symposia  of  the  politi- 
cal or  religious  clubs  that  were  so  common  in  Greece,  fre- 
quent opportunity  was  given  for  the  delivery  of  verses,  wdth 
musical  accompaniment;  at  the  better  sort  of  such  parties 
the  guests  were  expected  to  entertain  themselves  in  this 
intelligent  fashion.     A  banquet  of  this  kind,  at  which  the 

>  Professor  Gilbert  Murray's  exquisite  metrical  translations  of  Euripides 
do  not  disprove  my  contention,  for  they  are  very  free  Nachdichtungcn,  in 
which  even  the  imagery  of  the  original  is  sometimes  replaced  by  figures  of 
quite  different  character. 


LYRIC  POETRY  73 

entertainment  consists  of  a  series  of  glorifications  of  Eros 
(but  in  prose,  not  in  verse),  is  described  for  us  in  Plato's 
Symposium.  Probably  many  of  Archilochus's  poems  were 
composed  for  such  occasions ;  a  very  beautiful  bit  of  verse 
by  Xenophanes  describes  an  ideal  supper-party  of  reason- 
able men ;  and  there  are  many  others. 

One  of  the  literary  puzzles  connected  with  ancient  Greece 
is  a  collection  of  nearly  fourteen  hundred  elegiac  verses 
attached  to  the  name  of  Theognis  of  Megara.  The  personal- 
ity of  this  poet  is  a  matter  of  great  obscurity  ;  most  probably 
he  lived  till  somewhat  after  500.  The  researches  into  his 
life  and  poems  have  yielded  their  best  results  in  the  by- 
products, so  to  speak,  of  the  process  —  in  the  increased  knowl- 
edge we  have  gained  of  the  many-sidedness  and  richness  of 
this  sympotic  poetry.  The  collection  is  most  heterogeneous ; 
many  lines  which  occur  in  quotations  from  other  poets 
cannot  have  been  composed  by  Theognis  at  all ;  and  it  is 
often  impossible  to  determine  what  should  be  assigned  to 
him.  Scholars  are  divided  as  to  whether  the  collection  was 
made  for  didactic  purposes  or  to  serve  as  a  kind  of  song- 
book  at  symposia.  While  the  latter  is  more  probable  as  a 
whole,  it  must  be  admitted  that  some  details  of  the  arrange- 
ment point  to  a  didactic  object.  There  is  a  great  deal  of 
Lebensweisheit,  proverbial  philosophy  of  a  kind  always 
popular  among  the  Greeks ;  some  very  graceful  and  charm- 
ing toasts ;  endless  complaints  that  the  world  is  going  to  the 
dogs,  now  that  the  old  aristocracy  is  crowded  to  the  wall 
and  political  upstarts  and  the  newly  rich  have  gained  the 
upper  hand ;  and  some  curious  bits  of  very  personal  verse 
addressed  to  undesirable  companions  at  the  party,  one  of 
which  (595-598)  may  be  quoted  here  :  — 

Comrades  we'll  be,  dear  Sir,  but  at  a  distance ; 
(Of  all  but  wealth  one  may  have  quite  too  much  !) 
Be  friends,  perhaps,  for  long ;   but  your  assistance 
Pray  give  to  those  who  understand  your  touch. 


74  GREEK  LITERATURE 

A  beautiful  Greek  legend  of  Orpheus,  the  mythical  bard  of 
Thrace,  says  that  when  he  was  slain  by  Thracian  women  in 
their  frenzy  and  torn  in  pieces,  and  the  fragments  of  his  body 
thrown  into  the  sea,  the  head,  floating  upon  the  waves,  was 
carried  southward  to  Lesbos,  and  there  cast  upon  the  shore. 

The  legend  is  but  a  poetic  statement  of  the  fact  that  in 
Lesbos,  at  an  early  period  of  its  history,  arose  a  school  of 
poetry  that  produced  works  worthy  to  be  called  inspired. 
And  in  truth  the  sudden  efflorescence  of  genius  in  that  some- 
what remote  island  must  have  seemed  not  unmiraculous  to 
the  Greeks  of  later  times,  particularly  when  contrasted  with 
the  complete  eclipse  which  it  soon  afterward  suffered.  Ter- 
pander,  a  native  of  Lesbos,  is  said  to  have  gone  to  Sparta 
and  established  there  a  school  of  music  and  poetry,  early 
in  the  seventh  century  B.C.  At  the  end  of  the  same  century 
the  island  seems  to  have  contained  some  of  the  most  flourish- 
ing of  Greek  communities,  Mitylene,  Methymna,  and  Eresus. 
It  was  unusually  favored  by  nature,  its  scenery  and  climate 
having  few  rivals  in  any  part  of  the  Greek  world.  A  high 
degree  of  luxury  prevailed,  but  this  was  tempered  by  an 
artistic  sense  and  a  passion  for  the  beautiful  of  an  intensity 
that  have  hardly  been  known  elsewhere.  The  people  of 
Lesbos  were  of  Aeolian  stock,  high-strung,  quick-tempered, 
intense  alike  in  love  and  in  hate.  Political  passion  ran  high, 
and  one  murderous  feud  succeeded  another  with  startling 
rapidity,  in  which  Pittacus,  who  achieved  the  honor  of  inclu- 
sion among  the  "Seven  Wise  Men,"  played  a  leading  part. 
In  these  turbulent  surroundings  was  developed  an  art  of  music 
and  poetry  of  such  excellence  as  to  give  rise  to  various  prov- 
erbs :  "after  the  Lesbian  singer,"  because  at  Sparta  the  mem- 
bers of  the  school  of  Terpander  had  the  honor  of  singing  first  in 
musical  contests ;    and  one  which  Sappho  embodied  in  her  line 

Eminent  as  the  Lesbian  bard  among  strangers, 
which  may  have  referred  to  Terpander  himself. 


LYRIC  POETRY  75 

The  two  great  lights  of  Lesbian  poetry,  Alcaeus  and  Sap- 
pho, rose  not  far  apart,  about  the  end  of  the  seventh  cen- 
tury. Dates  cannot  be  set  with  exactness,  but  doubtless 
both  lived  well  beyond  600.  One  cannot  say  which  was  the 
elder,  nor  does  it  much  matter.  Of  course  they  were  brought 
into  fancied  relationship  by  later  writers,  even  before  the 
time  of  Aristotle,  and  even  recentlj^,  more's  the  pity, 
by  Mr.  Percy  IMackaye.  Alcaeus  is  revealed  to  us  by  the 
fragments  as  most  intimately  concerned  in  the  agitated  life 
of  his  native  town ;  they  bear  out  as  well  the  statement  of 
Athenaeus  that  he  was  a  valiant  fighter,  a  mighty  drinker, 
and  an  ardent  lover. 

To  Alcaeus  and  Sappho  are  reasonably  ascribed  the  elabora- 
tion of  the  numerous  rhythms  represented  in  the  fragments 
of  their  poems,  rhythms  undoubtedly  based  upon  forms  al- 
ready popular,  which  under  the  magic  of  their  touch  took 
on  new  life  and  beauty.  We  cannot,  however,  say  with 
certainty  what  particular  schemes  we  owe  to  each  of  them ; 
it  is  even  doubtful  whether  the  stanzas  called  Alcaic  and 
Sapphic  are  inventions  of  Alcaeus  and  Sappho  respectively. 
]\Iost  of  the  relics  of  Alcaeus  are  explainable  as  sympotic 
poems ;  the  social  gatherings  of  men  gave  occasion  alike  for 
political,  for  erotic,  and  for  purely  convivial  verse.  To  him 
we  owe  the  earliest  knowm  comparison  of  the  state  with  a 
ship  ;  perhaps  no  conceit  has  lasted  longer  in  literature.  In 
a  fragment  noted  for  its  power  and  vividness  he  describes 
the  vessel  laboring  in  a  heavy  sea,  amid  the  strife  of  winds 
that  buffet  her  on  this  side  and  on  that,  and  the  waves  that 
threaten  every  moment  to  swamp  the  already  water-logged 
vessel.  To  any  one  that  has  spent  a  boisterous  night  on  the 
Aegean  the  details  of  the  poem,  the  bilge-water  splashing 
about  the  mast,  the  rent  and  flapping  sail,  the  thrashing 
halliards,  call  up  an  exceedingly  vivid  picture ;  and  no  Greek 
who  had  gone  very  far  from  his  o^vn  door  could  fail  to  realize 
all  the  details.     When  a  Greek  poet  sings  of  the  sea  and 


76  GREEK  LITERATURE 

ships,  he  knows  what  he  is  talking  about,  and  that  his  hearers 
will  know  he  knows. 

Alcaeus's  feeling  for  nature,  like  that  of  all  Greek  poets, 
is  very  keen.  His  descriptions  are  brief,  directly  and  forcibly 
characteristic.  In  bitterness  against  his  enemies  he  almost 
equals  Archilochus.  Indeed,  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  the 
Parian  did  not  strongly  influence  the  Lesbian,  who  was  in 
so  many  ways  a  kindred  spirit.  Yet  the  metrical  prefer- 
ences of  the  two  are  very  different.  The  long  choriambic 
verses  of  Alcaeus  remind  us  of  nothing  in  Archilochus,  though 
he,  too,  employs  long  verses.  The  Lesbian  is  much  more 
distinctly  musical.  One  can  recite  Archilochus's  verses  with- 
out feeling  that  it  is  a  foolish  performance  ;  not  so  with  those 
of  Alcaeus  or  of  Sappho,  which  must  be  sung  if  their  metrical 
structure  is  to  be  clearly  revealed.  One  of  the  best  pieces 
of  Alcaeus  is  the  description  of  his  armory.  The  long, 
swinging  verses  are  beautifully  expressive  of  the  warrior- 
poet's  pride  in  his  weapons  and  armor,  kept  bright  and 
ready  against  the  day  of  use  —  and  may  it  soon  come  ! 

A  story  is  told  by  Pliny  and  others  of  the  Greek  painter 
Timanthes  and  his  famous  picture  of  the  sacrifice  of  Iphi- 
geneia,  in  which  the  artist  depicted  with  great  skill  and  a 
subtle  sense  of  proportion  the  various  degrees  of  emotion 
felt  by  the  participants  in  that  horrid  rite,  but  recoiled  before 
the  task  of  portraying  the  feelings  of  Agamemnon,  whom  he 
represented  with  veiled  face.  The  lecturer  who  faces  the 
problem  of  adequately  characterizing  Sappho  must  find  him- 
self somewhat  similarly  embarrassed,  but  unable  to  save 
himself  as  Timanthes  in  the  foolish  story  is  made  to  do. 
His  way  is  placarded  with  warnings.  "All  criticism  of 
Sappho,"  says  Professor  Shorey  in  a  recent  review  of  Mac- 
kail's  Lectures  on  Greek  Poetry,  "is  the  endeavor  to  impart 
to  those  who  cannot  read  Greek  an  ecstasy  which  they  can- 
not feel."  And  Professor  Mackail  himself  says:  "All 
praise  of  her  poetry  tends  to  become  ecstatic  and  hyper- 


LYRIC  POETRY  77 

bolical;  but  these  are  just  the  epithets  that  can  never  be 
appHed  to  her  poetry  itself.  Most  attempts  that  have 
been  made  to  reproduce  it  or  to  communicate  its  quahty 
force  the  note :  her  own  note  is  never  forced." 

No  writer  of  antiquity  has  been  so  often  alternately  raised 
on  a  lofty  pedestal  and  dragged  in  the  mire.  This,  however, 
only  with  reference  to  her  life ;  concerning  the  transcendent 
beauty  of  her  poetry  there  has  been  but  one  voice,  and  those 
critics  who  had  before  them  the  most  complete  collections 
of  her  poems,  the  ancients,  are  loudest  in  her  praise.  "She 
surpasses  all  other  women  in  poetry  as  far  as  Homer  sur- 
passes all  men";  "she  is  the  tenth  Muse"  ;  and  so  on 
through  endless  repetitions  and  modifications  of  admiration. 

Singularl}'  little  is  really  known  of  her  life,  or  was  known 
to  her  countrymen  in  succeeding  centuries,  to  judge  by  the 
romantic  tales  about  her  that  were  current  in  ancient  times. 
She  seems  to  have  maintained  a  school  of  music  and  poetry 
for  j'oung  women;  her  o^ti  house  she  calls  a  /toto-oTroXo? 
ot/cta,  "a  dwelling  frequented  by  the  Muses."  She  may 
well  have  been  the  head  of  a  kind  of  religious  community 
devoted  to  the  cult  of  Aphrodite,  who  is  often  invoked  in 
her  poems.  We  know  from  inscriptions  that  there  was  such 
a  ^taoros  (as  associations  of  that  kind  were  called)  of 
Aphrodite  at  Paros,  open  only  to  women ;  and  we  have  testi- 
mony of  a  form  of  cult  in  Lesbos  from  which  women  were 
strictly  excluded,  which  would  thus  have  formed  the  exact 
counterpart  of  such  a  ^tao-os  as  I  have  imagined  for  Sappho. 
Apparently  she  was  driven  from  Lesbos  by  political  upheavals, 
and  spent  many  years  abroad.  But  there  is  no  fragment  of 
her  poetry  that  cannot  be  referred  quite  naturally  to  the 
conditions  of  life  within  the  circle  of  her  pupils  and  friends. 
Many  of  the  most  beautiful  come  from  wedding-songs,  which 
Sappho  doubtless  ^vrote  for  her  pupils  when  they  left  her 
school  to  be  married.  The  dominant  note  of  her  poetry 
is  love,  and  the  affection  of  kindred  and  friends ;   and  never 


78  GREEK  LITERATURE 

have  these  emotions  found  more  exquisite  utterance.  The 
range  of  thought  is  not  wide,  but  within  the  compass  of  indi- 
vidual emotion  there  is  great  variety,  and  everywhere  the 
deepest  sincerity  and  the  most  earnest  intensity. 

Intensity  and  directness,  in  fact,  are  the  two  great  char- 
acteristics of  her  poetry.  "Would  it  were  possible,"  says  an 
old  Attic  drinking-song,  'Ho  open  the  breast  of  every  one  and 
look  in  at  his  heart,  to  see  what  manner  of  man  he  is." 
Sappho  has  opened  her  own  heart  for  us ;  and  we  may  say, 
without  ecstasy  or  hyperbole  or  affectation,  that  it  is  a 
sanctuary.  "Pure  must  he  be,"  we  read  in  an  extract  from 
an  anonymous  writer  quoted  by  Clement  of  Alexandria, 
"who  enters  a  temple  that  is  fragrant  with  incense;  for 
purity  is  the  thinking  of  holy  things."  No  temple  has  been 
oftener  polluted  by  the  touch  of  unclean  hands,  by  the 
unseemly  jest,  by  the  name  of  the  vulgar  tourist  scribbled  on 
the  columns  of  dazzling  marble,  than  the  sanctuary  of 
Sappho's  own  personality.  I  have  heard  it  said  by  a  pro- 
found student  and  unusually  skilful  and  sympathetic  inter- 
preter of  music  that  only  those  persons  can  properly  judge 
of  the  delicate  and  subtle  beauty  of  the  clavichord  who  play 
it  for  themselves.  Something  like  that  seems  to  me  to  be 
true  of  Sappho's  poetry,  except  that  it  is  comparable  rather 
to  the  violoncello,  with  its  tones  of  incomparable  richness 
and  softness.  If  it  seems  an  unfeeling  "counsel  of  perfec- 
tion" to  say  to  those  who  would  learn  to  know  Sappho  as 
well  as  the  lapse  of  twenty-five  hundred  years  will  permit: 
"Learn  Greek,  or  it  is  a  hopeless  task"  —  there  is  after  all 
nothing  else  to  say.  But  it  may  be  comforting  to  some  who 
would  know  Sappho,  yet  cannot  learn  Greek,  to  be  told  that 
perhaps  very  few  of  those  who  have  learned  it  have  really 
made  her  acquaintance. 

Six  poets  of  the  "canonical  nine"  of  the  Alexandrians 
belong  to  the  class  of  choral  lyrists:    Alcman,  Stesichorus, 


LYRIC   POETRY  79 

Ibycus,  Simonides,  Pindar,  Bacchylides.  Only  of  Pindar  and 
of  Bacchylides  have  we  complete  poems  remaining,  and  of 
Pindar  only  epinician  odes  in  complete  form.  Among  the 
fragments  of  Alcman  is  the  one  mentioned  above,  of  about 
140  lines,  our  only  specimen  of  a  Partheneion ;  of 
Stesichorus  and  Ibycus  there  is  very  little  left;  of  Simon- 
ides we  have  a  great  number  of  fragments,  but  more  than 
half  of  these  are  in  the  elegiac  distich,  and  the  longest  melic 
fragment  is  only  of  twenty-two  lines. 

The  choral  lyric  as  a  whole  bears  the  stamp  of  Dorian 
manners,  of  sedate  and  tranquil  beauty.  Dignified  measures 
prevail,  though  Pindar  shows  great  fondness  for  certain 
agitated  rhj'thms  in  f  time,  the  despair  of  most  modern 
metricians.  The  language  is  mainly  Doric,  but  greatly 
tempered  from  the  vernacular  types  in  local  use,  and  enriched 
with  forms  of  Aeolic  origin,  here  and  there  with  borrowings 
from  epic  diction.  But  of  these  six  poets  not  one  is  known 
to  have  been  an  out-and-out  Dorian.  Alcman,  though  his 
artistic  career  was  confined  to  Sparta,  was  born  in  Sardis, 
perhaps  of  Dorian  stock ;  Stesichorus  of  Himera  in  Sicily 
and  Ibycus  of  Rhegium  in  Italy  may  have  been,  for  all  we 
know,  of  very  mixed  parentage,  as  the  population  of  both 
these  towns  is  known  to  have  been  ;  Pindar  was  a  Boeotian  ; 
and  Simonides  and  Bacchylides  were  thorough  lonians. 

The  loss  of  the  music  to  which  the  choral  lyrics  were  sung 
has  been  far  more  serious  than  in  the  case  of  the  monodic 
lyric.  The  prerequisite  of  melody  is  tone,  which  cannot  be 
produced  without  the  three  essentials  of  pitch,  duration,  and 
intensity.  But  a  single  tone  is  not  melody,  which  appears 
only  when  tone  is  modified  by  variations  in  one  or  more  of 
the  three  elements  that  compose  it.  Despite  the  discovery 
of  a  few  inscribed  stones  bearing  the  text  of  hymns  with  simple 
designation  of  the  notes,  we  still  know  very  little  of  the  details 
of  Greek  music.  The  text  of  a  poem  of  Pindar,  for  exami)le, 
gives  us  no  indication  of  the  pitch-element  or  the  stress- 


80  GREEK  LITERATURE 

element  of  the  melody ;  it  does  give  us  some  indication  of 
the  time-element,  of  the  rhythm,  by  the  known  "quantity" 
of  the  syllables,  i.e.  the  relative  time  taken  for  the  utterance 
of  each  one.  But  there  is  no  indication  of  the  length  of  the 
rests,  which  we  have  to  figure  out  for  ourselves ;  and  there 
is  great  disagreement  among  metricians  on  this  score.  We 
have  no  specimen  of  notation  of  purely  instrumental 
music  from  classical  times ;  and  if  ancient  writers  on 
metre  had  not  handed  doT^^l  the  doctrine  of  long  and 
short  syllables,  we  could  find  in  the  texts  no  certain  in- 
dications of  the  rhji^hm,  which  was  quantitative  and  had 
nothing  to  do  \Adth  the  system  of  written  accents  that 
was  introduced  later.  It  is  because  the  rhythms  of  choral 
poetry  (which  was  in  most,  if  not  all,  cases  performed  with 
a  sort  of  dance  or  even  pantomime)  are  vastly  more  elaborate 
than  those  of  the  monodic  lyric,  that  the  loss  of  the  melodies 
has  left  us  more  in  the  dark  concerning  the  actual  effect  of 
the  pieces  when  executed.  A  favorite  plan  of  composition 
was  the  "strophic"  or  "triadic."  In  this  the  greater  met- 
rical divisions  of  the  poem  were  arranged  in  groups  of  three 
elements,  the  first  two,  called  strophe  and  antistrophe,  corre- 
sponding exactly  in  musical  structure,  the  third  differing  from 
them.  Any  number  of  such  triads  might  be  combined  to 
make  up  the  whole  poem.  Pindar  affords  some  of  the  briefest 
and  of  the  most  elaborate  examples,  ranging  from  one  triad 
to  a  splendid  aggregation  of  thirteen.  It  is  noteworthy  that 
no  two  choral  compositions  of  Pindar  and  the  three  tragic 
poets  that  have  survived  show  identical  metrical  structure. 

This  form  of  composition  appears  to  have  been  the  inven- 
tion of  Alcman,  who  may  be  dated  approximately  as  a  con- 
temporary of  Archilochus.  The  Sparta  of  his  day  was  very 
different  from  that  of  several  centuries  later.  It  was  the 
headquarters  of  choral  music  and  dancing,  the  Mecca  of 
poets  and  musicians  from  all  parts  of  the  Greek-speaking 
world.      Alcman,    though    a    foreigner,    identified    himself 


LYRIC  POETRY  81 

completely  with  Spartan  life.  He  used  in  some  of  his  poems 
an  extremer  form  of  local  vernacular  than  is  elsewhere  found 
in  the  choral  lyric.  They  show  a  singular  sweetness  and 
old-fashioned  quaintness,  a  grave  and  dainty  playfulness ; 
in  reading  them  one  has  at  times  a  sensation  as  of  looking 
at  well-preserved  daguerreotypes,  with  their  delicate  prim- 
ness. His  fondness  for  talking  of  himself  makes  of  him 
almost  a  poet  of  the  individual  lyric.  Many  of  his  poems 
seem  to  have  been  composed  to  be  sung  by  young  girls, 
and  are  most  charming  in  their  arch  simplicity  and  grace 
of  language  and  verse.  Among  the  shorter  fragments  two 
are  particularly  beautiful  and  justly  famous.  One  is  of 
four  hexameter  verses,  wherein  the  poet,  bent  with  old  age, 
complains  to  the  sweet-voiced  maidens  that  his  Umbs  can 
no  longer  support  him :  — 

Would,  ah!  would  I  were  a  halcyon  that  flies  with  the  birds  of 
his  flock  over  the  foaming  waves,  with  fearless  heart,  that  sea- 
purple  bird  of  the  spring. 

The  point  of  the  verses  lies  in  the  allusion  to  a  legend  that 
the  male  halcyon,  when  old  and  no  longer  able  to  fly,  is  car- 
ried by  his  mates  over  sea  to  his  resting-place.  Perhaps  it 
is  not  too  fanciful  to  imagine  that  Alcman  longs  to  be  trans- 
ported by  his  faithful  singers  across  the  sea  to  be  buried  in 
his  native  Sardis.  If  that  was  his  wish,  it  was  not  carried 
out,  for  Pausanias  saw  his  grave  at  Sparta.  The  other  frag- 
ment is  a  singularly  beautiful  description  of  the  sleep  of 
nature : — 

Asleep  are  the  summits  and  the  crags  of  the  mountains,  the 
headlands  and  ravines,  and  all  the  creeping  things  that  the  dark 
earth  nourishes,  the  mountain-ranging  beasts  and  the  race  of  bees, 
the  monsters  in  the  depths  of  the  purple  sea,  asleep  the  tribes  of 
long-winged  birds. 

No  English  words  can  reproduce  the  smoothness  and  liquid 
beauty  of  the  Greek.     Tiiomas  Campbell,  in  his  well-known 


82  GREEK  LITERATURE 

translation,  while  avoiding  for  the  most  part  the  danger 
of  "padding,"  is  guilty  of  such  a  sputtering  line  as  this:  — 

Its  monsters  rest,  whilst  wrapped  in  bower  and  spray. 

Goethe's  "Ueber  alien  Gipfeln  ist  Ruh,"  is  inevitably  com- 
pared, and  there  is  a  good  deal  of  sputtering  in  that,  beautiful 
as  it  is.  We  know  it  mostly  in  connection  with  Schubert's 
exquisite  music,  which  greatly  enhances  its  beauty.  If  we 
only  had  Alcman's  music  too  !  —  which,  however,  we  might 
find  much  too  simple  for  our  polyphonic  taste. 

Stesichorus  and  Ibycus  have  left  us  but  little  by  which 
their  literary  qualities  can  be  judged.  The  former  was 
immensely  popular  for  many  generations.  He  is  said  to  have 
made  the  Homeric  legends  more  familiar  to  the  Western 
Greeks,  in  Italy  and  Sicily,  and  to  have  worked  them  over 
on  a  grand  scale  for  use  in  his  choral  songs.  Probably  the 
subjects,  more  than  the  mode  of  treatment,  which  seems  to 
have  been  of  what  we  should  call  a  romantic  type,  assured 
the  lasting  performance  and  circulation  of  his  works.  We 
know  that  his  influence  was  felt  and  his  poems  used  as  school 
texts  in  Roman  times. 

Ibycus,  perhaps  best  known  to  moderns  from  the  legend 
of  the  cranes  who  betrayed  his  murderers,  which  was  utilized 
by  Schiller  for  his  famous  poem,  was  the  passionate  poet 
of  love,  unique  in  adding  this  note  to  the  Dorian  song  of  the 
chorus.  As  far  as  we  can  judge  from  the  few  fragments,  his 
language  was  intense  and  highly  colored,  his  figures  vivid, 
and  his  versification  at  once  sonorous  and  agitated. 

The  caprice  of  fate  is  nowhere  better  illustrated  than  by 
the  case  of  Simonides.  An  Ionian  by  birth,  he  seems  to  have 
made  all  of  Greece  his  home  by  turns,  dying  at  last  in  far-off 
Sicily,  full  of  years  and  of  honors.  In  the  anecdotal  part 
of  Greek  literary  history  he  bulks  large.  Later  writers  never 
weary  of  telling  of  his  witticisms,  and  many  inventions  are 
ascribed  to  him,  some  of  which  are  earlier  by  one  or  more 


LYRIC  POETRY  83 

centuries  than  the  time  of  his  birth.  Older  than  Pindar  by 
some  thirty  years,  he  was,  like  him,  the  friend  and  companion 
of  the  great  in  all  quarters  of  the  Greek  world,  and  many  of 
his  jests  bear  upon  such  intimacies.  When  asked  if  it  was 
better  to  be  wise  or  rich,  he  answered :  "To  be  rich,  for  the 
wise  are  to  be  found  at  the  doors  of  the  rich"  —  a  joke  which 
receives  its  full  explanation  only  when  we  remember  that  the 
"wise"  man  is  the  poet,  and  the  "rich"  the  prince.  Ap- 
parently Simonides  was  a  thoroughgoing  man  of  the  world, 
well  versed  in  practical  affairs,  a  welcome  and  valued  coun- 
sellor at  many  courts.  His  versatility  was  evidently  very 
great,  and  his  literary  production,  continued  to  the  last  days 
of  his  life,  not  less  so.  Of  the  epinician  odes,  written  for 
victors  in  the  great  games,  we  have  but  a  few  scanty  frag- 
ments that  afford  no  fair  means  of  comparison  with  Pindar. 
He  was  particularly  famous  for  Threnoi,  or  dirges,  and  for 
epitaphs ;  in  some  of  the  fragments  of  the  former,  and  com- 
plete specimens  of  the  latter,  the  exquisite  jGnish  of  his  art  is 
especially  conspicuous.  The  famous  lines  referring  to  Danae 
and  the  infant  Perseus  tossed  about  on  the  sea  in  the  chest 
in  which  they  had  been  cast  adrift  by  her  father  Acrisius, 
and  a  brief  fragment  from  an  Enkomion  on  those  that  fell 
at  Thermopylae,  are  perhaps  the  most  characteristic  that  we 
possess.  Their  beauty  consists  rather  in  the  careful  and  ex- 
haustive elaboration  of  a  single  idea,  which  is  cut  and  pol- 
ished like  a  diamond,  and  set  in  a  bezel  of  cunningly  chased 
phrase,  than  in  richness  of  thought  or  depth  of  feeling.  There 
is  much  pathos,  but  it  tends  to  a  sentimentaUty  which  is 
apt  to  be  a  little  overwrought.  But  the  workmanship  of 
every  fragment,  every  epigram  and  distich,  is  flawless.  There 
is  an  amusing  story,  told  in  Athenaeus,  that  by  the  richness 
and  variety  of  his  mythological  allusions  he  made  life  miser- 
able for  the  poor  schoolmasters  who  had  to  explain  his 
works.  As  an  example  of  the  elaborateness  with  which 
he  expresses  a  single  thought,  illuminating  it  from  every 


84  GREEK  LITERATURE 

side,  I  choose  the  fragment  of  the  Enkomion  just  men- 
tioned :  — 

Of  them  that  died  at  Thermopylae  glorious  is  the  fate,  and 
happy  the  lot,  and  their  tomb  has  become  an  altar  ;  in  the  place  of 
lamentations  is  recollection,  and  of  mourning  praise.  Such  a  wind- 
ing-sheet neither  decay  nor  all-subduing  time  shall  destroy.  This 
sepulchre  of  brave  men  has  received  as  its  indweller  the  glory  of 
Hellas  ;  witness  Leonidas,  king  of  Sparta,  who  has  left  behind  him 
a  mighty  glory  of  valor  and  everlasting  fame. 

But  no  translation  can  show  the  variety  that  is  gained  in 
Simonides's  diction  by  subtle  changes  in  the  order  of  words 
and  in  the  rhythmical  phrasing ;  the  polished  jewel  is  held 
up  to  the  light  and  turned  to  and  fro  that  it  may  catch  and 
reflect  every  ray  of  the  spectrum. 

The  greatest  glory  of  the  choral  IjTic,  however,  shines  for 
us  in  Pindar,  the  proud  Boeotian  who  claimed  to  be  the  equal 
of  the  princes  whom  he  extolled.  His  poetical  career  began 
about  500  B.C.,  when  he  was  hardly  twenty  years  old,  and  for 
more  than  half  a  century  he  remained  by  the  side  of  his 
rival  Simonides  (there  was  no  love  lost  between  them)  in 
the  forefront  of  popular  attention,  favorite  of  princes,  a 
sojourner  at  Syracuse  and  Agrigentum,  eagerly  sought  for 
to  glorify  the  achievements  of  those  that  won  in  the  great 
games.  Only  his  epinician  odes,  composed  for  such  victors, 
have  survived  except  in  fragments,  but  his  activity  extended 
over  many  fields  of  poetry,  and  in  splendor  of  language  the 
fragments  equal  any  parts  of  the  complete  poems.  It  is 
hard  to  understand,  in  view  of  this,  how  the  epinician  poems 
alone  should  have  received  the  honor  of  constant  recopy- 
ing,  which  has  been  the  means  of  preserving  them  for  the 
edification  of  modern  readers. 

The  custom  of  celebrating  a  great  athletic  victory,  gen- 
erally after  the  victor's  return  to  his  home,  with  the  added 
splendor  of  a  choral  ode  composed  for  the  occasion  by  some 
noted  poet,  seems  to  have  been  a  short-lived  fashion.     Per- 


LYRIC  POETRY  85 

haps  a  century  was  the  extent  of  its  prevalence,  but  in  that 
period  it  called  forth  some  of  the  most  gorgeous  poetry  that 
European  literatures  have  known.  Not  every  victor  could 
expect  to  secure  a  Simonides  or  a  Pindar  or  a  Bacchylides 
to  immortalize  his  achievements,  or  could  afford  to  make 
provision  for  proper  performance  of  the  elaborate  choral 
odes,  which  demanded  the  services  of  trained  singers.  The 
most  splendid  of  the  odes  are  those- written  for  the  great 
princes  of  Sicily  and  Cyrene  whose  horses  had  won  at  Olym- 
pia  and  Delphi ;  the  most  elaborate  of  all,  the  Fourth 
Pythian,  was  composed  for  Arcesilas  of  Cyrene  in  466, 
apparently  as  a  commission  from  a  nobleman  of  Cyrene 
who  had  been  exiled  and  was  anxious  to  regain  the  favor  of 
the  king.  It  is  an  imposing  poem  of  three  hundred  long 
lines,  a  cantata,  which  must  have  taken  at  least  an  hour  to 
perform ;  but  it  is  also,  quite  apart  from  its  metrical  and 
musical  splendor,  a  literary  work  of  the  first  rank. 

The  principle  of  composition  of  these  grand  odes  is  prac- 
tically the  same  throughout.  Instead  of  the  obvious  and 
matter-of-fact  glorification  of  the  victor  to  the  exclusion 
of  other  themes,  which  would  soon  become  commonplace 
and  tiresome,  Pindar  adopts  a  far  more  artistic  and  effective 
plan.  Whether  it  was  his  own  innovation  or  the  invention  of 
Simonides,  who  preceded  him  in  the  composition  of  such  odes, 
we  cannot  say,  as  not  one  of  Simonides's  epinicians  has  come 
down  to  us.  It  is,  however,  probable  that  Pindar  merely 
elaborated  a  custom  which  he  had  inherited.  A  story  is  told 
by  Cicero,  Quintilian,  and  others,  that  Simonides  wrote  an 
Enkomion  for  Scopas,  a  Thessalian  prince,  in  which  he  had 
so  much  to  say  of  Castor  and  Pollux,  and  so  little  of  Scopas, 
that  the  prince  paid  him  but  half  the  sum  agreed  upon, 
tolling  him  to  go  to  the  Dioscuri  for  the  rest.  After  an  intro- 
duction of  general  character,  Pindar  soon  turns  to  an  account 
of  the  founding  of  the  games,  or  to  some  noted  event  in  the 
legends  connected  with  them,  or  to  the  legendary  history 


86  GREEK  LITERATURE 

of  the  victor's  family,  or  the  past  glories  of  his  native  city. 
By  far  the  greater  part  of  every  ode  —  except  a  few  very 
short  ones  —  is  taken  up  with  such  a  myth  or  legend,  told 
with  all  the  splendor  of  gorgeous  diction  and  wealth  of  im- 
agery that  the  poet  has  at  his  command.  The  narration 
of  the  myth  finished,  the  poet  turns  to  the  victor,  but  even 
now  his  praises  are  sung  in  relatively  restrained  language. 
It  is  as  victor  in  the  greatest,  most  glorious  contests  known 
to  man,  or  as  worthy  descendant  of  illustrious,  even  divine 
ancestors,  or  as  citizen  who  brings  honor  to  a  state  already 
justly  famous,  that  he  is  extolled ;  and  throughout  Pindar 
insists  upon  the  indispensable  service  that  he  is  performing 
in  singing  of  the  achievement,  for,  as  he  says  in  a  stray 
fragment,  OvaaKu  aiyaOlv  KaXov  tpyov,  "the  fair  deed  that  is 
unmentioned  dies." 

This  praise  by  indirection  is  characteristic  of  much  of  the 
best  Greek  work.  A  noble  example  of  it  is  the  Funeral 
Oration  which  Thucydides  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Pericles, 
purporting  to  have  been  dehvered  at  the  public  funeral 
ceremonies  of  those  Athenians  who  had  fallen  in  the  first 
year  of  the  Peloponnesian  War.  The  whole  is  an  enco- 
mium of  Athens,  of  her  glorious  past,  her  great  achievements 
in  war  and  in  peace,  her  liberal  and  enlightened  constitu- 
tion ;  and  it  is  only  at  the  end  that  with  a  very  swift  transi- 
tion he  acclaims  the  dead  as  worthy  sons  of  such  a  state,  in 
whose  fame  they  are  to  find  fame,  comforts  their  surviving 
kinsmen  with  the  thought  of  their  undying  glory,  and  exhorts 
these  to  noble  emulation  of  such  bravery  and  self-sacrificing 
patriotism. 

As  an  illustration  of  Pindar's  way  of  working,  I  should  like 
to  give  as  briefly  as  possible  an  abstract  of  one  of  the  finest 
of  the  odes,  the  Seventh  Olympian.  It  was  written  in  honor 
of  Diagoras  of  Rhodes,  who  won  in  boxing  at  Olympia  in 
464  B.C.  He  belonged  to  a  family  famed  for  its  noble  an- 
cestry, and  besides  being  the  greatest  of  Greek  boxers  had 


LYRIC   POETRY  87 

the  satisfaction  of  seeing  his  sons  and  grandsons  win  prize 
after  prize.  Rhodes,  his  fatherland,  Dorian  to  the  core, 
was  devoted  to  the  worship  of  the  sun,  and  the  brilliancy  of 
its  life  was  noted  throughout  Greece.  Its  coins  bore  the 
head  of  Helios-Apollo,  or  the  rose,  symbol  of  the  sun. 
The  whole  ode  glows  with  color ;  but  across  it  there  fall  three 
shadows.  A  blessed  outcome,  so  the  poet  sings,  may  follow, 
by  the  grace  of  God,  even  upon  transgression.  So  famous 
did  the  ode  become,  according  to  an  ancient  commentator, 
that  it  was  written  in  letters  of  gold  and  preserved  in  the 
temple  of  Athena  at  Lindos.  The  poem  begins  with  a  strik- 
ing comparison :  "As  when  in  wealthy  hand  one  lifts  a  cup, 
l^ubbling  within  with  the  dew  of  the  vine,  and  gives  it  to 
the  young  spouse  of  his  daughter,  pledging  his  health,  a 
gift  from  home  to  home,  best  of  his  golden  treasures,  bringing 
honor  to  the  joyous  feast  and  to  the  alliance,  and  among 
the  friends  that  sit  by  makes  him  to  be  envied  for  the  wed- 
lock of  souls ;  so  I,  bringing  a  draught  of  nectar,  gift  of  the 
Muses,  sweet  fruit  of  my  mind,  do  homage  unto  victors 
at  Olympia  and  Pytho."  Then  the  poet  turns  rapidly  to 
his  main  theme,  the  praise  of  Rhodes.  This  is  handled  with 
great  adroitness ;  three  instances  of  wrong-doing  (from  the 
legendary  history  of  the  island),  are  introduced,  in  reverse 
chronological  order,  each  one  of  which  led,  nevertheless,  to 
a  happy  result.  Tlepolemus  in  sudden  passion  slew  his 
mother's  brother.  In  expiation  of  the  deed  he  was  bidden 
by  the  oracle  to  lead  forth  a  colony  to  Rhodes.  It  was  upon 
Rhodes  that  Zeus  sent  down  a  shower  of  gold,  at  the  time  of 
Athene's  birth.  This  serves  as  transition  to  the  next  earlier 
stage.  The  sun,  as  the  god  that  sees  all  things,  beheld  the 
birth  of  Athene,  and  bade  his  children  in  Rhodes  be  the  first 
to  worship  the  new  goddess.  They  went  up  to  the  citadel 
to  offer  sacrifice,  but  forgot  the  fire,  and  so  were  forced  to 
sacrifice  with  fireless  rites.  Yet  Zeus  forgave  them  this  and 
rained  down  gold  upon  their  land.     Then  Pindar  goes  back 


88  GREEK  LITERATURE 

to  the  earliest  period  of  all.  How  did  Helios  and  his  children 
come  into  possession  of  Rhodes  ?  When  Zeus  divided  up 
the  earth  among  the  gods,  Rhodes  still  lay  beneath  the 
surface  of  the  sea.  Helios  failed  to  come  to  the  allotment, 
and  was  left  portionless.  Zeus  offered  to  redivide  the  earth, 
but  Helios  stopped  him,  for  he  saw  at  that  moment  the  island 
rising  from  the  sea,  and  took  it  as  his  portion  ;  and  it  remained 
as  a  heritage  to  his  children.  For  Tlepolemus,  who  led  the 
men  of  Tiryns  to  this  lordly  island,  was  ordained  the  honor  of 
sacrifice  and  of  games.  At  these  home  games  Diagoras  won 
great  renown,  yes,  and  at  Isthmia  and  at  Nemea,  too,  and  at 
Athens  and  elsewhere,  and  now  at  Olympia.  The  ode  ends 
with  a  prayer  to  Zeus  for  the  future  welfare  of  Diagoras, 
"who  walks  in  the  straight  way  that  abhors  all  inso- 
lence." 

No  description  can  give  an  idea  of  the  magnificence  of 
Pindar's  diction  ;  it  fairly  glows  with  color,  like  a  great  cathe- 
dral window  filled  with  rich  but  harmonious  stained  glass. 
But  it  is  not  garish  or  tawdry  splendor ;  and  it  is  never 
commonplace  or  vulgar.  Not  only  in  the  great  epinician 
odes  are  Pindar's  powers  manifest.  In  some  of  the  shortest 
the  same  qualities  appear,  as  in  the  Fourteenth  Olympian, 
composed  in  honor  of  a  Boeotian  boy,  Asopichus  of  Orcho- 
menus,  an  ancient  seat  of  the  worship  of  the  Graces.  The 
poem  is  of  only  twenty-four  lines,  but  the  structure  is  mas- 
sive in  the  extreme.  The  first  twelve  lines  are  taken  up 
with  an  eloquent  praise  of  the  Graces  and  the  great  part  that 
their  inspiration  has  played  in  the  civilization  of  men.  In 
the  second  half  the  Graces  are  invoked  by  name,  and  be- 
sought to  be  propitious,  now  that  a  scion  of  their  beloved 
city  is  an  Olympic  victor.  Then,  unexpectedly  but  most 
effectively,  the  poet  turns  to  Echo,  who  is  besought  to  enter 
the  dark-walled  dwelling  of  Persephone,  queen  of  the  dead, 
and  to  seek  out  the  boy's  father,  that  he  may  learn  how  his 
son  has  crowned  his  youthful  locks  at  glorious  Olympia  with 


LYRIC   POETRY  89 

the  wreath  of  triumph.  And  many  of  the  fragments  from 
poems  of  other  classes  are  worthy  mates  of  any  passages 
that  the  odes  of  victory  can  produce.  Perhaps  the  most 
famous  of  the  fragments  is  that  from  the  dithyramb  in  honor 
of  Athens  :  — • 

O  shining  and  violet-crowned  illustrious  Athens,  full  of  song, 
bulwark  of  Hellas,  citadel  divine ! 

Many  modern  readers  recoil  from  Pindar,  and  the  indis- 
criminate praise  of  former  times  has  given  place  to  a  no  less 
uncritical  depreciation.  This  is  due,  perhaps,  partly  to 
the  waning  popularity  of.  poetry,  partly  to  a  feeling  that 
there  is  some  incongruity  between  the  magniloquent  grandeur 
of  the  treatment  and  the  relative  unimportance  of  the  theme 
(as  it  appears  to  many  literal-minded  moderns),  and  partly, 
too,  because  one  is  apt  to  read  too  much  at  once.  The  odes 
are  strong,  rich  meat,  highly  seasoned,  and  not  for  mental 
dyspeptics,  or  for  a  class  whom  Professor  Gildersleeve  rather 
tartly  calls  ''devotees  of  the  great  goddess  Anaemia." 

Of  Bacchylides,  last  and  perhaps  least  of  the  nine  poets 
of  the  Canon,  we  happen  nowadays  to  know  more  than  was 
known  during  the  fifteen  hundred  years  that  ended  with 
the  last  century.  The  nephew  of  Simonides,  he  seems  to 
have  learned  much  from  him  in  the  way  of  poetical  composi- 
tion, above  all  a  marvelous  facility  and  smooth  melodious- 
ness of  style,  for  all  the  world  like  the  music  of  Mendelssohn. 
The  discovery  of  the  papyrus  ms.  to  which  reference  was 
made  above  restored  to  us  not  only  many  of  his  epinician 
odes,  but  also  two  poems  of  a  class  hitherto  unexemplified 
among  the  relics  of  Greek  poetry.  One  of  these  describes 
in  a  very  breezy  and  delightful  fashion  the  defiance  shown 
by  Theseus  to  King  Minos  of  Crete  on  the  voyage  from  Athens 
to  Cnossus,  and  the  astonishing  adventures  of  Theseus  when 
in  response  to  the  taunt  of  Minos  he  leaped  overboard  after 
the  ring  which  the  king  had  cast  into  the  sea.     The  poem 


90  GREEK   LITERATURE 

gives  literary  illustration  and  explanation  to  several  well- 
known  works  of  Greek  art. 

With  Bacchylides  the  real  history  of  Greek  lyric  poetry 
comes  to  an  end,  except  for  the  dithyramb,  which  entered 
upon  a  new  career  of  popularity,  becoming,  in  fact,  a  sort  of 
ancient  oratorio.  The  new  fragment  of  the  Persians  of 
Timotheus  reveals  an  unexpected  stage  of  turgid  frothiness 
which  contrasts  very  painfully  with  the  severe  beauty  of  the 
earlier  lyric. 

It  is  a  long  and  devious  way  on  which  I  have  led  my  hearers 
through  the  mass  of  ruins  with  which  this  ancient  sanctuary 
of  the  Muses  is  thickly  strewn.  Here  and  there  a  noble 
building  still  stands  nearly  intact,  but  the  most  of  our  journey 
has  shown  us  only  broken  capitals,  bits  of  architectural  orna- 
ment, fragments  of  sculpture,  of  exquisite  workmanship,  it 
is  true,  but  unrelated  and  heaped  up  in  hopeless  confusion. 
Is  it  possible  to  discover  a  logical  connection  between  these 
myriad  rehcs,  to  bring  them  into  any  clear  relation  to  a  con- 
structive principle,  or  to  trace  their  influence  upon  genera- 
tions following  those  that  produced  them  ? 

The  chief  element  that  they  have  in  common,  not  only, 
in  fact,  with  each  other,  but  with  all  the  best  Greek  work, 
is  that  of  direct  practical  applicability  to  the  end  in  view. 
The  form  is  closely  conditioned  by  the  content.  The  letter 
is  not  at  war  with  the  spirit ;  it  does  not  kill,  but  draws  life 
from  the  spirit  and  becomes  its  best  ally.  It  is  straight- 
forward, honest  expression  that  we  find  for  the  most  part, 
harmonious  and  graceful  because  the  language  was  har- 
monious and  graceful. 

The  Greek  was  generally  free  from  affectation  and  cant. 
He  often  made  the  mistake,  due  to  his  ruling  passion  for 
order  and  system,  of  assuming  that  what  was  beautiful  to  the 
eye  was  also  morally  good ;  but  he  was  saved  from  the  still 
cruder  mistake  of  assuming  that  external  beauty  must  con- 


LYRIC   POETRY  91 

ceal  some  moral  defect.  There  is  a  profound  truth  under- 
h'ing  the  legend  of  Helen :  the  truth  that  beauty  is  not  skin- 
deep.  But  the  Greek  distinguished  very  clearly  between 
beauty  and  prettiness.  The  outlines  of  his  spiritual  land- 
scape, as  of  his  natural  landscape,  were  exceedingly  firm 
and  severe.  And  he  felt  himself  as  a  human  being,  no  more 
I  and  no  less,  and  was  prepared  to  take  the  consequences. 

Edward  Delavan  Perry. 


TRAGEDY 

(  The  Greek  tragic  poets  were  earnest  students  of  the  prob- 
lems^and  mysteries  of  human  hfe.     Man's  relation  to  the 
universe  about  him,  his  obUgations  to  the  unseen  powers 
which  control  the  universe,  his  duties  to  his  fellow-beings, 
the  seeming  conflicts  between  human  and  divine  law,  all 
these  form  the  material  of  Greek  tragedy.     The  wide  range 
of  the  subject  naturally  makes  it  a  difficult  one  to  discuss 
satisfactorily    in    a   single   lecture,   and    to    separate   those 
features  of  it  which  are  essential  and  universal  from  those 
which  are  less  so  is  not  an  easy  matter.     It  seems  neces- 
sary at  the  outset  to  put  aside  questions  which  may  be 
called  historical  and  which  have  to  do  with  the  origin  of 
Greek  Tragedy  and  with  the  traditional  elements  in  its  com- 
ponent parts.     To  trace  the  growth  of  this  form  of  poetry 
from   its   beginnings,   such   as   may   perhaps   be   witnessed 
to-day  in  certain  very  primitive  Greek  communities,^  and 
to  understand  its  close  relation  to  the  epic  and  lyric  poetry 
which  preceded  it,  and  then  to  note  how  the  dramatic  ele- 
ment forces  that  which  is  mainly  lyric  into  a  more  and  more 
subordinate  position  —  these  are  indeed  matters  of  moment 
to  one  who  would  understand  the  true  character  of  Greek 
Tragedy.     It  is,  however,  not  tragedy  in  its  becoming  which 
concerns  us  now,  but  in  its  completeness,  as  the  three  great 
Attic  masters  of  the  fifth  century  B.C.  produced  it.     I  would 
also  avoid  discussion  of  the  vexed  question  of  the  stage  and 
of  similar  matters,  for,  as  Aristotle  says,^  the  power  of  tragedy 

»  Cf.  Journal  of  Hellenic  Studies,  XXVI,  pp.  191  fif.  >^ 

2  Poetics,  VI,  §  19,  XIV,  §§  1,  2. 
92 


TRAGEDY  93 

should  be  felt  apart  from  representation  and  actors.  Thus 
the  main  consideration  is  to  get  at  an  estimate  of  Greek 
Tragedy  which  shall  indicate  whether  it  possesses  the  essen- 
tial qualities  of  really  great  poetry.  If  a  person  has  read 
much  of  such  poetry  in  any  language,  he  comes  to  know  its 
accent  and  thus  gradually  to  form  a  standard  by  which  he 
ma}^  test  his  impressions.  To  attempt  to  define  it  is  generally 
unprofitable,  but  one  may  predicate  certain  of  its  essential 
qualities  without  fear  of  contradiction.  The  poet  must  in 
the  first  place  draw  his  inspiration  immediately  from  the 
life  and  the  world  about  him;  for  if  he  is  inspired  mainly  by 
other  poets,  his  thoughts  and  his  pictures  may  indeed  be 
beautiful,  but  they  will  after  all  be  like  the  shadows  of  real 
objects  which  the  men  see  in  Plato's  description  of  the 
cave.^  This  perhaps  is  self-evident,  even  though,  with  senses 
soothed  by  the  beauty  of  sound  and  rhythmic  movement, 
we  now  and  then  forget  the  truth,  until  it  is  brought  home 
to  us  by  some  simple  lyric  which  has  not  lost  the  tone  of 
pure  folk-poetry,  like  the  best  lyrics  of  Burns  or  some  of 
Heine's,  or  a  graphic  line  of  Theocritus,  or  like  one  of  those 
wonderful  phrases  of  Sappho,  resplendent  with  human 
passion  and  rich  in  human  sympathy.  There  is  another 
quality  also  which  the  best  poetry  will  certainly  have,  that 
which  enables  it  to  make  its  appeal  unconfined  by  bounds 
of  nationality  and  language  —  the  quality  of  universality. 
And  it  is  naturally  only  the  greatest  poets  who  attain  to 
this,  for  to  do  so  implies  a  mind  which  can  read  in  its  indi- 
vidual experience  the  experience  of  humanity,  and  which 
instinctively  understands  how  to  separate  the  adventitious 
from  the  permanent  and  essential.  This  is  the  quality  one 
feels  when  startled  by  the  penetrating  truth  and  wisdom  of 
some  of  Shakespeare's  lines,  uttered  with  an  ease  which 
seems  thoughtless ;  and  a  Uke  power,  with  like  magic  of 
phrase,  is  found  in  Sophocles.     Thus  one  may  without  ques- 

'  Republic,  VII,  init. 


94  GREEK  LITERATURE 

tion  accept  Arnold's  oft-quoted  dictum  that  the  noble  and 
profound  application  of  ideas  to  life  is  the  most  essential 
part  of  poetic  greatness.  (To  understand  then  the  life  and 
thought  which  has  surrounded  a  great  poet  is  of  the  highest 
importance,  if  we  seek  to  understand  his  poetry;  and  if  the 
age  in  which  he  lived  shows  tendencies  in  its  spiritual  life 
which  seem  typical  of  the  movements  and  changes  in  the 
intellectual  history  of  mankind,  we  shall  expect  to  find  that 
a  great  poet  in  such  a  time  ■v\-ill  so  interpret  these  tendencies 
as  to  make  his  work  typical  of  the  thought  of  humanityj 

Let  us  therefore  briefly  consider  what  the  leading  char- 
acteristics were  of  the  age  during  which  the  three  great 
tragic  poets,  Aeschylus,  Sophocles,  and  Euripides,  lived  — 
the  period,  say,  from  about  525  to  about  400  b.c.  It  is  pre- 
eminently the  Attic  period  of  Greek  intellectual  life,  but  the 
elements  which  entered  into  it  were  the  contributions  of 
manj^  parts  of  the  Greek  world.  Ionian  epic,  lyric,  and 
elegiac  poetry,  Ionian  philosophical  speculation,  the  Dorian 
choral  lyric,  and  the  Aeolian  lyric  of  Lesbos  all  made  them- 
selves felt  in  the  Athens  of  the  sixth  century  B.C.  The  stimu- 
lus also  of  Ionian  plastic  and  graphic  art  was  marked  at  this 
time,  and  it  penetrated  deeply  into  the  ideas  of  the  common 
people,  as  may  be  seen  in  the  industrial  work  of  the  period. 
Nor  was  the  stirring  atmosphere  of  political  struggle  lacking. 
(The  Athenians  were  strongly  affected  by  the  rising  tide  of 
democracy  which  was  spreading  through  the  Greek  world, 
and  early  in  the  sixth  century,  as  the  Solonian  legislation 
shows,  the  pressure  for  social  change  became  intense  through 
economic  stress.  There  followed  years  of  sharp  struggle 
between  the  growing  democracy  and  the  house  of  Pisistratus 
—  in  many  ways  an  enlightened  dynasty  —  until  toward 
the  close  of  the  century,  under  the  constitution  of  Cleisthenes, 
a  sure  foundation  was  laid  for  the  popular  power  that  was 
to  develop  during  the  next  century.  Of  the  religious  influ- 
ences during  this  sixth  century  we  know  little  in  detail,  but 


TRAGEDY  95 

it  is  certain  that  the  Homeric  and  Hesiodic  theologies  were 
being  purified  and  spirituahzed,  and  it  is  likely  that  the 
pantheism  and  the  eschatology  of  the  Orphic  teaching  was 
beginning  to  have  the  effect  which  is  evident  in  many  writ- 
ings of  a  later  day. 
(Hardly  had  the  young  Athenian  state  become  securely 
established  when  it  was  called  upon  to  lead  in  the  struggles 
of  the  Persian  Wars,  and  from  these  it  came  forth  with 
national  consciousness  strengthened  by  suffering.     The  time 
of  stress  had  brought  to  the  front  a  number  of  very  able  men 
as  leaders  in  the  constitutional  development  which  followed. 
Up  to  the  time  of  the  death  of  Pericles  in  429  b.c,  high 
ability  in  the  management  of  affairs  is  conspicuous.     It  made 
possible  the  estabhshment  of  the  Athenian  naval  supremacy 
and  the  confederation  of  allies  which  was  dependent  on  this, 
and  it  held  in  check  the  excesses  of  the  undisciplined  democ- 
racy.    The  period  of   about  fifty  years  after   the  Persian 
Wars  was  thus  one  of  prosperity,  high  hope,  and  patriotic 
enthusiasm. ";  Athens  became  the  intellectual  centre  of  Greece, 
and  the  rapid  progress  which   took  place   in  the  develop- 
ment of  literature  and  art  shows  how  well  the  men  of  the 
previous   century   had   laid   the   foundations.     The   drama 
passed  out  of  its  early  period  of  crudity  and  became  the 
most  distinctive  form  of  poetry,  exerting  a  strong  influence 
on  men's  thoughts  in  many  walks  of  life.     History,  too,  in 
the   hands   of   Herodotus  and   Thucydides  lost   its   genea- 
logical and  annalistic  character  and  developed  into  a  real 
form  of  literature.     Oratory  began,  stimulated  by  a  wide- 
spread interest  in  rhetoric  and  steadied  in  its  growth  by  the 
debates  of  the  public  assemblies  and  of  the  law-courts.     Phil- 
osophic speculation,  too,  was  most  active.     The  dark  but 
pregnant  thought  of  Heraclitus,  continuing  and  far  surpass- 
ing in  its  range  the  speculations  of  the  early  Ionic  philos- 
ophers, entered  deeply  into  the  intellectual  life.     Out  of  the 
now  matured  colonies  of  Magna  Graecia  there  flowed  back 


96  GREEK  LITERATURE 

upon  the  mother-country  the  differing  stream  of  Eleatic 
philosophic  thought,  and  this,  too,  was  a  strong  and  stimulat- 
ing influence.  In  still  more  immediate  contact  with  many  of 
the  leading  minds  of  Athens  was  the  inspiring  teaching 
of  Anaxagoras ;  and  it  would  seem  that  the  theories  of  the 
Atomic  philosophers  must  have  added  to  thought  something 
of  the  same  elements  that  have  come  to  us  through  the  pres- 
ent era  of  scientific  discovery.  Such  an  atmosphere  naturally 
created  a  great  demand  for  higher  education,  and  to  meet 
this  certain  of  the  so-called  sophists  established  themselves 
in  Athens.;  Their  teaching  may  have  been  in  some  ways 
superficial,  but  it  was  calculated  to  provoke  discussion  and 
often  dissent,  and  thus  to  increase  the  ferment  in  the  minds 
of  men.  The  powerful  influence  of  Socrates  also  was  felt  in 
the  second  half  of  this  fifth  century,  and  his  searching  analysis, 
with  its  inductive  reasoning  and  general  definition,  was 
applied  to  the  many  problems,  still  little  thought  out,  which 
were  in  the  air. 

This  same  century  was  quite  as  remarkable  on  the  side 
of  painting,  sculpture,  and  architecture.  The  frescoes  of 
Polygnotus  and  his  school,  the  sculptures  of  the  Phidian 
circle  of  artists,  and  the  splendid  Doric  and  Ionic  archi- 
tecture, of  which  we  still  have  the  ruins,  played  a  brilliant 
part  in  the  general  inteUectual  activity.  Nor  was  the  in- 
fluence of  vigorous  trade  wanting.  The  Piraeus  became  a 
busy  mart  which  attracted  merchants  and  manufacturers, 
and  many  brought  with  them  the  liberalizing  influence  of 
contact  with  a  larger  world. ^  As  is  natural,  the  literature 
indicates  on  every  hand  that  the  serious  questions  of  religion 
were  in  men's  thoughts.  The  older  conceptions  of  the  gods 
had  become  inadequate,  and  we  see  them  rejected  in  one  way 
or  another  by  different  minds.  Euripides  is  above  all  others 
the  poet  in  whom  this  spirit  of  revolt  appears,  and  with  the 

1  Cf.  Aeschylus,  Agamemnon,  vs.  1043,  for  a  remark  which  shows  that 
the  society  of  the  poet's  day  knew  nouveaux  riches. 


TRAGEDY  97 

fading  away  of  the  old  beliefs,  he  finds  an  outlet  for  his  relig- 
ious emotions  in  the  Ufe  immediately  about  him,  through 
deep  s^nnpathy  with  human  suffering.  How  typical  of  the 
processes  of  human  spiritual  growth  all  this  seems  !  How 
like  some  of  the  changes  in  thought  among  ourselves  during 
the  last  fifty  or  sixty  years  !  There  was,  however,  one  pecu- 
liarity of  the  conditions  at  Athens  which  must  have  tended 
greatly  to  increase  the  inspiration  felt  by  the  higher  minds. 
This  point  is  well  put  by  Professor  Gilbert  Murray,  whom  I 
quote.  "There  was  a  circumstance  that  has  rarely  been 
repeated  in  history  —  the  fact  that  all  the  different  advances 
appeared  to  help  one  another.  The  ideals  of  freedom,  law, 
and  progress ;  of  truth  and  beauty,  of  knowledge  and  virtue, 
of  humanity  and  religion ;  high  things,  the  conflicts  between 
which  have  caused  most  of  the  disruptions  and  despondencies 
of  human  societies,  seemed  for  a  generation  or  two  at  this 
time  to  He  all  in  the  same  direction."  ^  This  is  the  spirit 
of  Periclean  Athens,  before  it  had  been  in  a  measure  crushed 
by  the  evil  spirit  of  the  Peloponnesian  War.  It  shines  forth 
in  the  noble  speeches  which  Thucydides  puts  into  the  mouth 
of  Pericles,  it  appears  in  the  Athenian  ideals  as  Herodotus 
pictures  them,  and  it  is  constantly  illustrated  in  the  patriotic 
utterances  of  the  three  great  tragedians.  Plainly  the  popu- 
lar mood  was  one  of  enthusiasm  and  high  hope,  such  as  might 
well  have  inspired  the  great  chorus  in  the  Antigone  of  Soph- 
ocles (w.  332  ff.)  on  man's  power  over  nature.  With  this 
spirit  Sir  Richard  Jebb  ^  suggests  a  comparison  of  Milton's 
enthusiastic  words  in  which  after  the  battle  of  Marston 
Moor  he  describes  the  "noble  and  puissant  nation  rousing 
herself  like  a  strong  man  after  sleep." 

As  we  turn  now  to  consider  the  great  poetic  interpreters 
of  thought  in  this  fifth  century,  Aeschylus,  Sophocles,  and 
Euripides,  one  rather  singular  fact  may  be  noted.  Not  only 
does  the  period  mirror  to  us  much  that  is  typical  of  all  human 

*  Introduction  to  Euripides'  Bacchae,  p.  xxiii.  ■*  Essays,  p.  136. 


98  GREEK  LITERATURE 

striving  toward  improvement,  but  these  poets  themselves 
illustrate  certain  well-marked  and  diverse  types  of  mind, 
which  are  just  as  characteristic  of  humanity  to-day  as  they 
ever  were.     The  subUme  imagination  of  Aeschylus  lifts  him 
to  a  region  where  the  great  forces  of  the  universe  seem  to  be 
close  about  him.     The  moral  government  of  all  things,  the 
misery  and  mystery  of  sin,  the  wisdom  which  comes  by 
suffering  form  the  background  of  his  thought.     Sophocles, 
on  the  other  hand,  is  in  the  good  sense  a  man  of  the  world. 
He  sounds  the  depths  of  hfe,  but  with  the  patience  of  one 
who  would  not  have  progress  break  vnth  tradition.     In  the 
case  of  a  complicated  nature  like  that  of  Euripides,  such  gen- 
eral characterization  is  difficult.     Taking  the  hint  from  a 
remark  of  the  late  Dr.  James  Adam,  ^  I  quote  a  passage 
from  Arnold's  essay  on  "Barbarians,  Philistines,  and  Popu- 
lace," ^  in  which  he  speaks  of  certain  natures  born  in  each 
class  of  society  who  have  a  curiosity  about  their  best  self, 
with  a  bent  for  seeing  things  as  they  are,  for  disentangling 
themselves  from  social  machinery,  and  for  simply  concern- 
ing themselves  with  reason  and  the  will  of  God.     "This 
bent,"  says  Mr.  Arnold,  "always  tends  to  take  them  out 
of  their  class,  and  to  make  their  distinguishing  characteristic 
not    their    Barbarianism    or    their    Philistinism,    but    their 
humanity.     They  have  in  general  a  rough  time  of  it  in  their 
lives ;    .  .  .  they  set  up  a  fire  which  enfilades,  so  to  speak, 
the  class  with  which  they  are  ranked;    and,  in  general,  by 
the  extrication  of  their  best  self  as  the  self  to  develop,  and 
by  the  simplicity  of  the  ends  fixed  by  them  as  paramount, 
they  hinder  the  unchecked  predominance  of  that  class  life 
which  is  the  affirmation  of  our  ordinary  self,  and  seasonably 
disconcert  mankind  in  their  worship  of  machinery."     Now 
Euripides  was  exactly  one  of    these    disconcerting   person- 
alities ;  a  great  thinker,  a  great  poet,  by  no  means  an  impec- 

1  Religious  Teachers  of  Greece,  p.  319. 
*  Culture  and  Anarchy,  1895,  p.  85. 


TRAGEDY  99 

cable  artist,  and  the  prophet  of  a  new  era.  When  one  thinks 
of  this  triad,  each  so  different  from  the  others,  one  wonders 
at  the  easy  definitions  of  the  Greek  spirit  and  the  talk  about 
the  worship  of  physical  beauty,  etc.,  which  are  sometimes 
heard.  So  characteristically  human  are  the  differing  ten- 
dencies of  these  three  men  that  it  is  always  interesting  to 
note  the  different  types  of  people  who  specially  admire  the 
one  or  the  other  of  them. 

Before  taking  up  more  directly  the  work  of  the  three 
masters,  let  us  consider  certain  distinctive  qualities  of 
Greek  Tragedy  which  grow  out  of  the  conditions  under  which 
it  arose.  It  was  connected  with  religious  observance,  as  an 
element  in  the  festival  of  Dionysus,  and  its  subject-matter 
was  inherited  from  the  epic,  and  was  thus  in  a  measure 
prescribed.  One  play,  to  be  sure,  the  Persians  of  Aeschylus, 
treats  of  a  contemporary  subject,  and  we  hear  of  one  or  two 
others,  but  they  are  merely  exceptions  which  prove  the  rule, 
and  the  tendency  to  select  such  subjects  died  out  early.  This 
traditional  nature  of  the  tragic  material,  its  national  character, 
and  the  knowledge  the  hearers  had  of  the  legends  used  must 
be  borne  in  mind,  if  one  would  understand  Greek  Tragedy. 
The  failure  of  Euripides  to  recognize  some  of  the  necessary 
limitations  of  this  situation  was  disastrous  to  the  artistic 
unity  of  certain  of  his  plays.  Contrast  these  conditions 
A\nth  the  perfect  freedom  of  choice  in  getting  his  subjects 
which  Shakespeare  exercised,  and  the  liberty  he  enjoyed  in 
doing  anything  he  chose  ^vith  most  of  his  characters.  (  Greek 
Tragedy  is  thus  markedly  representative  of  the  Greek  mind 
as  a  whole  and  of  a  national  consciousness,  much  more  so 
than  modern  tragedy  could  be,  and,  were  it  not  for  the  very 
universal  character  of  the  thought  of  the  time,  a  fact  which  I 
have  already  emphasized,  the  poets  might  have  shown  a 
provincial  tone  in  their  Avritings.  They  were,  however, 
saved  from  this  both  by  their  intellectual  surroundings,  and 
by  the  fact  that,  in  dealing  with  the  legends  of  their  own  great 


100  GREEK  LITERATURE 

past,  there  was  a  natural  tendency  to  idealize  the  characters 
represented  and  thus  to  identify  them  with  certain  funda- 
mental ethical  relations.  Such  identification,  however,  does 
not  go  so  far  as  to  make  mere  types  or  ethical  abstractions 
of  the  characters;  they  live,  and  their  individuality  is  clear 
and  often  striking,  but  the  action  is  not  determined  pri- 
marily within  the  individual  soul.  The  characters  of  Antig- 
one, Oedipus,  and  Orestes  are  indeed  interesting  in  them- 
selves, but  we  think  comparatively  little  of  their  personali- 
ties as  distinct  from  the  general  considerations  which  they 
bring  before  us.  One  has  only  to  remember  Hamlet  to  con- 
trast the  modern  attitude  with  all  this.  The  deepest  part 
of  his  tragedy  lies  within  his  own  nature.^  If  one  wants  a 
modern  instance  of  the  ancient  attitude,  Wagner's  drama  of 
Tannhduser  might  give  it.  Here  we  have  as  the  tragic 
theme  the  opposing  influences  of  sacred  and  profane  love  — 
Aphrodite  Urania  and  Aphrodite  Pandemus  —  as  they  mani- 
fest themselves  in  the  experience  of  Tannhauser.  Speaking 
generally  then,  and  with  the  reservations  which  large  gen- 
eralizations commonly  call  for,  Greek  Tragedy  is  a  drama  of 
ideas,  modern  tragedy  a  drama  of  character.  The  latter 
gives  its  interpretation  of  life  in  character,  the  former 
through  character.  The  sequel,  however,  will  show  that  the 
Greek  poets  are  constantly  putting  an  increased  emphasis  on 
character.^    y'With  these  general  remarks  as  a  preface,  let 

1  Cf.  A.  C.  Bradley,  Oxford  Lectures  on  Poetry,  p.  77. 

'  It  is  interesting  to  observe  how  certain  of  these  general  tendencies  in 
Greek  Tragedy  seem  to  be  summed  up  and,  as  it  were,  explained  in  the  prin- 
ciples of  Tragedy  which  Aristotle  enunciates  in  his  Poetics,  principles  that 
naturally  depend  upon  the  drama  as  it  had  developed  in  the  century  before 
the  philosopher  lived.  Take  these  words,  for  example,  about  plot:  "The 
plot,  then,  is  the  first  principle,  and  as  it  were  the  soul  of  the  tragedy ;  char- 
acter comes  second.  .  .  .  Tragedy  is  the  imitation  of  an  action  and  of  the 
agents  because  of  the  action"  (chap.  6),  and  other  passages  to  the  same  effect. 
(See  especially,  chap.  9,  the  remarks  about  the  universal  and  particular.)  Then 
in  the  various  remarks  Aristotle  has  about  the  kind  of  person  who  will  make 
an  effective  tragic  hero,  he  gives  us  valuable  comment  on  the  actual  practice  of 


TRAGEDY  101 

us  pass  on  to  a  nearer  consideration  of  the  three  great 
masters. 

Aeschylus  was  born  about  525  b.c.  He  was  of  the  old 
nobility,  but  in  sympathy  with  the  earlier  ideals  of  the 
Athenian  democracy.  He  came  from  Eleusis,  that  home 
of  the  Mj'steries,  and  source  of  some  of  the  deeper  currents  of 
Greek  religious  thought.  It  would  appear  that  he  showed 
his  literary  ability  early  in  life,  but  was  called  away  from  such 
work  by  the  terrible  experiences  of  the  Persian  Wars.  He 
fought  in  the  three  great  battles  of  Marathon,  Salamis,  and 
Plataea,  and  his  brothers,  too,  were  soldiers  at  this  time. 
From  the  year  472,  the  date  of  his  Persians,  until  the  time 
of  his  death  in  456,  Aeschylus  was  the  leading  Athenian  poet, 
even  though  his  supremacy  was  occasionally  called  in  question 
by  the  rising  genius  of  Sophocles.  No  doubt  he  had  attained 
to  this  position  before  the  date  mentioned,  and  his  Suppliant 
Women,  an  undated  but  earlier  play,  and  our  only  really 
archaic  specimen  of  the  Athenian  drama,  has  much  of  high 
poetic  promise  in  it.  Aeschylus  appears  to  have  been  at 
least  three  times  in  Sicily,  and  thus  to  have  been  familiar 
with  the  wider  aspects  of  Greek  civilization,  and  in  one  or 
two  plays  he  shows  an  interest  in  geographical  detail  such  as 
might  suggest  a  fondness  for  travel,  and  certainly  a  curiosity 
about  half-known  or  unknown  lands.  These  are  all  the  facts 
in  the  life  of  Aeschylus  which  are  reasonably  certain ;  and 
those  which  were  probably  of  chief  importance  in  his  spiritual 
development  are  his  early  life  at  Eleusis,  the  experiences  of 
the  Persian  Wars,  and  his  travel  to  distant  regions. 

Only  seven  of  the  ninety  plays  he  wrote  are  preserved. 
Each  play  is  part  of  a  trilogy,  or  series  of  three,  through 

Greek  Tragedy.  He  limits  the  field  of  selection,  as  we  should  expect,  and  also 
the  qualities  of  character  in  the  chief  personages,  though  not  quite  so  much, 
I  believe,  as  some  scholars  have  been  inclined  to  think.  It  should  be  remem- 
bered, too,  that  his  theory  does  not  seem  to  meet  quite  adequately  all  the  facts 
even  of  Greek  Tragedy. 


102  GREEK  LITERATURE 

which  some  leading  idea  may  be  followed,  but  no  trilogy 
except  the  Oresteia  {Agamemnon,  Choephori,  and  Eumenides) 
has  been  preserved,  and  the  other  four  plays  are,  therefore, 
in  a  sense  fragments.  This  is  a  fact  which  often  makes  it 
difficult  to  be  sure  whether  we  understand  correctly  the  entire 
bearing  of  a  given  drama.  In  the  case  of  the  Prometheus 
Bound,  for  example,  one  of  the  best  of  all  the  plays,  the  loss 
of  the  Prometheus  Freed  (probably  the  second  play)  makes 
it  impossible  to  understand  how  the  poet's  plan  was  finally 
worked  out.  We  are,  however,  able  to  conjecture  what  that 
plan  was,  since  a  few  fragments  of  this  play  have  been  pre- 
served, and  there  are  helpful  remarks  in  scholiastic  comment. 
The  third  play  of  the  trilogy,  Prometheus  the  Fire-Bearer, 
is  practically  unknown,  though  it  is  probable  that  in  this 
the  reconciliation  between  Zeus  and  the  Titan  Prometheus 
received  its  seal  by  the  establishment  of  Prometheus  as  the 
Attic  divinity  of  fire.^  Thus  honor  was  shown  an  existing 
cult,  as  is  the  case  in  the  third  play  of  the  Oresteia,  the 
Eumenides,  in  which  the  Furies  become  the  Gentle  Goddesses, 
and  receive  honors  of  worship.  To  introduce  into  the  drama 
the  beginnings  of  such  religious  cults  is  common  also  with 
Euripides. 

It  is  impossible  here  to  attempt  any  analysis  of  the 
plays  of  Aeschylus,  but  some  notion  of  the  quality  of  his 
imagination  may  be  gained  by  considering  briefly  the  general 
plan  of  the  two  trilogies  referred  to  —  those  of  Prometheus 
and  Orestes.  The  action  of  the  Prometheus  moves  in  super- 
human regions.  The  old  order  of  violence  in  the  govern- 
ment of  the  universe,  represented  by  the  Titans,  has  given 
way  before  the  enlightened  rule  of  Zeus,  through  which  the 
ideas  of  cosmic  order  and  justice  shall  prevail.  Prometheus, 
who  is  of  the  race  of  Titans,  and  his  mother  Themis  have  been 
on  the  side  of  Zeus  in  the  struggle.  When  this  is  over  and 
Zeus  is  seeking  to  organize  his  rule,  he  finds  man  sunk  so 

*  Cf.  Sophocles,  Oedip.  Col.,  55,  6  Trvp(f>6pos  0e6s. 


TRAGEDY  103 

low  that  he  deems  it  necessary  to  let  the  old  race  die  out, 
and  to  create  a  new  one  in  its  place.  In  this  purpose  he 
clashes  with  Prometheus,  who  is  man's  champion.  Prome- 
theus steals  fire^jvhich  has  been  concealed,  and  gives  it  to 
mankind.  Thus  is  man  able  to  raise  himself,  and  the  pur- 
pose of  Zeus  is  thwarted.  The  play  of  Aeschylus  depicts 
the  punishment  of  Prometheus  for  this  rebellion;  but  the 
Titan  is  immortal  and  caimot  be  utterly  destroyed,  and  the 
opening  scene  of  the  play  represents  Strength  and  Force, 
with  the  god  Hephaestus,  fastening  him  to  the  storm-beaten 
rocks  of  farthest  Scythia.  But  Prometheus  will  not  yield, 
and  he  refuses  to  reveal  a  secret  the  knowledge  of  w^iich 
would  enable  Zeus  to  protect  his  dynasty  from  final  over- 
throw. Zeus  threatens  the  rebel,  and  at  the  end  of  the  play 
he  casts  him  amid  fire  and  storm,  still  unconquered,  into  the 
abyss.  A  considerable  part  of  the  drama,  which  has  no  plot 
in  the  sense  in  which  this  term  is  used  of  Sophocles  and 
Euripides,  consists  of  conversations  between  Prometheus  and 
the  chorus  of  Oceanides,  and  of  an  attempt  by  Oceanus 
himself  to  move  the  captive  from  his  stubborn  mood.  The 
maddened  lo,  too,  another  victim  of  Zeus,  is  introduced,  and 
her  w^anderings  and  their  happy  issue  are  foretold  by  Prome- 
theus, perhaps  with  the  idea,  on  the  poet's  part,  of  suggest- 
ing that  in  the  end  the  plans  of  Zeus  may  be  benevolent. 
The  chorus,  of  Ocean's  daughters,  is  a  poetic  creation  of 
great  beauty,  and  in  their  sympathy  for  the  prisoner  and  their 
readiness  to  share  his  fate,  in  spite  of  a  gentle  disapproval 
of  his  course,  they  seem  in  a  way  to  sum  up  the  impression 
which  the  drama  makes:  "Lo!  how  thankless  thy  gift, 
Beloved  !  Speak  —  what  help  shall  there  be,  and  where  ? 
What  succor  from  creatures  of  a  day?  Dost  not  see  the 
fe('i)le  weakness,  dreamlike,  to  which  the  blind  race  of  man 
is  fettered?  In  no  wise  shall  mortal  counsels  overpass  the 
harmony  of  Zeus."     (Vv.  545  ff.) 

Aeschylus  has  depicted  the  conflict  between  two  actions 


104  GREEK  LITERATURE 

each  good  in  itself  —  a  common  enough  cause  of  tragedy  in  all 
ages.^  Prometheus  suffers  nobly  for  his  love  of  man,  but  he 
cannot  grasp  the  great  purposes  of  Zeus  which  work  together 
for  good.^  Yet  in  the  Prometheus  Bound  it  is  the  Titan  who 
awakens  sjonpathy,  and  Zeus  is  the  harsh  and  unjust  ruler. 
This,  however,  could  never  have  been  the  impression  which 
Aeschylus  intended  his  whole  trilogy  to  leave  on  the  mind. 
Years  before  in  his  Suppliant  Maidens  he  wrote  of  Zeus :  — 

Justly  his  deed  was  done, 

Unto  what  other  one 

Of  all  the  gods,  should  I  for  justice  turn  ? 

From  him  our  race  did  spring ; 

Creator  he  and  King, 

Ancient  of  Days  and  wisdom  he,  and  Might. 

As  bark  before  the  wind. 

So,  wafted  by  his  mind. 
Moves  every  counsel,  each  device  aright. 

(Vv.  590  ff.   Morshead.) 

Though  the  deep  will  of  Zeus  be  hard  to  track, 

Yet  doth  it  flame  and  glance, 
A  beacon  in  the  dark,  'mid  clouds  of  chance 

That  wrap  mankind. 
Yea,  though  the  counsel  fall,  undone  it  shall  not  lie, 
Whate'er  be  shaped  and  fixed  within  Zeus'  ruling  mind  — 
Dark  as  a  solemn  grove,  with  somber  leafage  shaded, 

His  paths  of  purpose  wind, 

A  marvel  to  man's  eye. 

(Vv.  86ff.   Morshead.) 

And  again,  many  years  after  the  Prometheus,  he  wrote  in  the 
Agamemnon :  — 

And  whoso  now  shall  bid  the  triumph-chant  arise, 
To  Zeus  and  Zeus  alone. 

He  shall  be  found  the  truly  wise. 
'Tis  Zeus  alone  who  shows  the  perfect  way 

'  Cf .  Bradley,  Oxford  Lectures  on  Poetry,  p.  86. 

2  Cf.  Heraclitus,  Frag.  61,  Bywater,  (rvvreXei  Suravra  6  6ebi  Trpdj  apixovlav 
rwv  6\wp,  oiKovofxQiv  to.  <xv/x(pipovTa.  "God  accomplishes  all  things  for  the 
harmony  of  the  whole,  ordering  that  which  is  for  the  best." 


TRAGEDY  105 

Of  Knowledge  :  He  hath  ruled, 

Men  shall  learn  wisdom  by  affliction  schooled. 

(Vv.  173  ff.  Morshead.) 

The  poet  then  unquestionably  reconciled  the  powers  which 
are  so  opposed  in  the  Prometheus  Bound,  but  how  this  was 
done  we  cannot  know  in  detail. 

Turning  now  to  the  Oresteia,  we  are  able  to  understand  the 
poet's  method  more  clearly.     The  work  was  performed  in 
458  B.C.,  two  years  before  the  death  of  Aeschylus,  and  it 
represents  the  most  perfect  development  of  his  poetic  genius. 
Here^Jhe  immediate  surroundings  are  no  longer  superhuman. 
The  jtragedy,  however,  illustrates  the  working  of  two  prin-  ^c 
cj^es  conceived  as  eternal  laws  —  that  sin  shall  ultimately  ^>V-/ 
meet  with  punishment  and  that  the  evil  deed  begets  a  progeny     r  y 
like  unto  itself  —  a  progeny  which  may  appear  in  succeeding   ^^^y^- 
generations.     The  first  of  these  principles  depends  on  what  f  f    i 

was  a  popular  ethical  maxim  that  it  was  for  the  "  doer  (the  sin-  .'  '  ' 

ner)  to  suffer. "  ^     The  second,  that  sin  begets  its  children,^  is      *^- 
the  poet's  own  belief,  differing  from  the  less  spiritual  popular 
saying  that  an  excessive  prosperity  engenders  vice  as  its  off-  -^ 

spring.  These  are  the  inexorable  laws  of  life,  necessary  for 
human  development,  but  frequently  involving  the  individual 
in  what  seems  unmerited  suffering.  He  sins  indeed  himself, 
but  when  the  taint  of  sin  is  in  his  blood,  how  shall  he  escape  ? 
This  ethical  problem  the  poet  does  not  solve.  Perhaps  we 
may  ask  whether  any  one  has  solved  it.  In  the  Oresteia  Aes- 
chylus seeks  a  solution  in  the  reconciliation  which  he  effects 
between  Apollo,  who  has  commanded  Orestes  to  take  ven- 
geance for  his  father's  death,  and  the  Erinyes,  whose  func- 
tion it  is  to  haunt  him  who  has  unlawfully  shed  human 
blood.  But  this  is  to  avoid  an  ethical  solution  of  the  ques- 
tion and  to  take  refuge  in  the  mythology  of  Greek  religion.^ 

*  Cf.  ChoSphori,  vs.  313,  bpaaavri  iradeXu  rpiydpuv  /xOOoi  rdde  <pwveT. 

*  Cf.  Agamemnon,  vv.  750  ff. 

'  Cf.  Adam,  Religious  Teachers  of  Greece,  p.  153. 


106  GREEK  LITERATURE 

Yet  there  is  in  this  mythological  solution  the  suggestion  that 
he  who  is  innocent  of  evil  purpose  must  be  saved.  In  any 
case,  however,  it  is  the  collision  between  certain  lines  of  duty 
enjoined  by  eternal  law  ^  which  gives  Aeschylus  his  tragic 
situation,  and  which  produces  what  has  been  called  the 
"spiritual  waste"  (Bradley,  I.e.)  involved  in  all  tragedy. 

In  the  first  play  of  this  trilogy,  the  Agamemnon,  the  family 
taint  of  inherited  sin  becomes  manifest  through  the  pride 
of  the  conqueror  of  Troy.  He  had  further  done  a  deed  of 
blood  in  seeking  to  appease  the  wrath  of  Artemis  by  the 
sacrifice  of  his  child  Iphigeneia,  and  had  thereby  incurred  the 
hatred  of  Clytemnestra,  his  wife.  In  the  absence  of  the  Greeks 
at  Troy,  Clytemnestra  had  sinned  with  Aegisthus,  against 
her  husband,  and  the  guilty  pair  were  in  control  at  Argos. 
The  treacherous  wife  gives  Agamemnon  a  false  welcome  on  his 
return  ffomT^.oy,  casts  a  net  over  him  while  he  is  in  the  bath, 
and  slays  him,  exulting  in  the  deed.  So  ends  the  first  play. 
This  sinful  act  begets  as  an  offspring  in  the  next  generation  the 
slaying  of  Clytemnestra  and  Aegisthus  by  Orestes.  The  blood 
of  Agamemnon  calls  for  vengeance,  and  Apollo  commands 
the  matricide.  The  fulfilment  of  this  command  is  the  subject 
of  the  second  play,  the  Choephori,  or  Libation-Bearers.^ 

1  Note  the  bearing  on  this  of  Professor  Goodwin's  convincing  interpretation 
offioTpa  fxo'ipav  {Agamem.  vs.  1026),  Trans.  Am.  Philol.  Assoc.  1877,  pp.  14  ff. 

2  Browning  {Pauline)  in  a  few  lines  gives  a  vivid  sketch  of  two  great  scenes 

in  these  plays,  that  in  the  Agamemnon,  in  which  the  returned  hero  enters 

the  palace,  and  the  second  at  the  close  of  the  Choephori,  when  the  half-crazed 

Orestes  tries  to  justify  the  deed  which  has  made  him  victor  with  the  "curse 

of  pollution  for  his  prize"  (Choeph.,  vs.  1017)  :— _,     ,  . 

The  king 

Treading  the  purple  calmly  to  his  death, 

While  round  him,  like  the  clouds  of  eve,  all  dusk, 

The  giant  shades  of  fate,  silently  flitting, 

Pile  the  dim  outline  of  the  coming  doom. 

And  the  boy 

With  his  white  breast  and  brow,  and  clustering  curls, 

Streaked  with  his  mother's  blood,  and  striving  hard 

To  tell  his  story  ere  his  reason  goes. 

(Quoted  by  Morshead  in  his  translation.) 


TRAGEDY  107 

After  the  bloody  deed  is  done,  the  third  play,  the  Furies  or 
Eumenides,  opens  with  a  wonderful  scene  in  which  Orestes 
has  taken  refuge  at  Delphi  from  the  pursuit  of  the  Furies. 
The  grisly  band  are  around  him  in  slumber,  as  he  clings  to 
the  altar.     Thus  do  they  describe  their  office  (vv.  307  ff.) :  — 

Of  Justice  are  we  ministers, 
And  whosoe'er  of  men  may  stand 
Lifting  a  pure  unsullied  hand, 
That  man  no  doom  of  ours  incurs, 
And  walks  thro'  aU  his  mortal  path 
Untouched  by  woe,  unharmed  by  wrath. 
But  if,  as  yonder  man,  he  hath 
Blood  on  his  hands  he  strives  to  hide, 
We  stand  avengers  at  his  side. 
Decreeing,  Thou  hast  wronged  the  dead; 
We  are  doom's  witnesses  to  thee. 
The  price  of  blood,  his  hands  have  shed, 
We  wring  from  him  ;  in  life,  in  death. 

Hard  at  his  side  are  we  !     (Vv.  307  ff.  Morshead.) 

So  in  the  spirit  of  Orestes  is  the  consciousness  of  having 
followed  divine  law  in  exacting  vengeance  assailed  by  the  re- 
morse for  his  bloody  deed.  The  poet  transfers  this  conflict 
to  the  realm  of  Greek  religion,  making  the  Olympian  Apollo 
represent  one  side,  and  for  the  other  calling  forth  from  the 
valley  of  the  shadow  the  dreaded  Chthonian  Erinyes.  At 
last  by  the  persuasion  and  authority  of  Athena  the  fearful 
Daughters  of  Night  become  Eumenides,  or  spirits  of  goodwill, 
and  the  sufferer's  soul  is  at  peace.  The  mighty  power  in  the 
human  spirit,  Remorse,  becomes,  when  sin  is  absent,  the  be- 
neficent power  which  watches  over  all  the  ways  of  men.^  It 
is  a  thought  worthy  of  a  great  poet  and  seer  who  has  revealed 

A  world  above  man's  head  to  let  him  see 
How  boundless  might  his  soul's  horizon  be. 

But  to  make  ch^ar  with  what  splendor  and  wealth  of  thought 
this  revelation  has  been  made  would  far  exceed  what  is  now 

'  Eumenides,  vs.  O.'JO,  Travra  yap  avrai  to,  Kar   dvdpJnrov^  tXaxov  bUireiv. 


108  GREEK  LITERATURE 

possible.  With  a  mind  of  such  mystic  and  transcendental 
quality  it  is  not  strange  that  the  language  of  Aeschylus  should 
at  times  become  overloaded  with  epithet,  and  that  enough 
of  a  bombastic  tone  should  occasionally  appear  in  it  to  justify 
the  good-natured  fun  of  the  Frogs  of  Aristophanes.  In  the 
Oresteia,  however,  there  is  little  trace  of  such  tendencies,  and 
the  same  wealth  of  imagination  which  is  shown  in  the  general 
conception  of  the  trilogy  appears  also  in  the  language ;  it 
is  extraordinarily  rich  in  beautiful  metaphor  and  simile.  In 
spite  of  the  many  reminiscences  of  the  epic  in  Aeschylus,  his 
language  takes  its  main  color  from  the  lyric,  and  this  may  be 
seen  in  the  dialogue  as  well  as  in  the  choruses.  His  gifts  as  a 
lyric  poet  are  indeed  quite  as  marked  as  his  dramatic  ability, 
and  nowhere  is  his  creative  imagination  more  evident  than 
in  the  best  of  the  choral  songs.  Aeschylus,  of  course,  shows 
his  varied  powers  with  varying  degrees  of  excellence  in  dif- 
ferent plays,  but  in  the  Agamemnon  there  seems  to  be  a 
concentration  of  his  abilities.  The  first  three  choral  odes 
have  all  the  qualities  which  may  be  looked  for  in  the  greatest 
poetry :  there  is  the  rapid  and  skilful  narrative  which  Pindar 
knows  so  well  how  to  use  ;  there  is  the  rich  thought  of  a  mind 
that  broods  deeply  on  the  mysteries  of  life ;  there  is  great 
beauty  and  pathos  in  all  that  has  to  do  with  the  sacrifice 
of  Iphigeneia,  and  in  the  description  of  the  deserted  Menelaus, 
to  whom  by  night  come  visions  of  past  happiness  which  forth- 
with are  gone  ''on  wings  that  follow  the  ways  of  sleep"; 
and  there  is  the  bitter  description  of  the  woes  which  the  strife 
of  battle  brings  to  those  who  remain  at  home,  when  Ares, 
war's  money-changer,  who  traffics  not  in  gold  but  in  human 
bodies,  sends  back  in  place  of  those  who  went  forth  only 
scanty  ashes  in  an  urn.  The  great  scene  in  this  play  in  which 
the  captive  Cassandra  foretells  the  impending  doom  and  her 
own  death  shows  a  combination  of  lyric  and  dramatic  power 
that  can  hardly  be.  paralleled  elsewhere.  It  strongly  con- 
firms the  impression  of  great  intellectual  force  and  originality 


TRAGEDY  109 

which  the  work  of  Aeschylus  in  general  makes.  As  was 
remarked  in  the  case  of  the  Prometheus,  he  has  not  the  care- 
fully constructed  plot  which  is  characteristic  of  his  successors, 
nor  shall  we  generally  find  distinctly  drawn  human  char- 
acters, since  his  personages  are  used  primarily  to  illustrate 
the  working  of  inexorable  law,  but  to  this  rule  there  is  one 
splendid  exception  —  that  of  Clytemnestra.  Perhaps  there 
may  have  been  others  in  the  lost  plays.  In  spite  of  the  fact 
that  she  is  described  (vs.  1500)  as  merely  the  ''grim  avenger" 
of  the  family  in  the  semblance  of  Agamemnon's  wife,  her 
fierce  passion  and  masterful  intellect  appear  with  wonderful 
distinctness.  The  great  speeches  which  she  makes  are  subtle 
in  thought,  splendidly  dramatic,  and  brilliant  with  forceful 
rhetoric.  Her  powerful  personality  is  clear.  This  fact  it 
is  important  to  note,  because  in  the  subsequent  develop- 
ment of  the  drama  not  only  the  structure  of  the  plot,  but 
the  delineation  of  individual  character  becomes  more  and 
more  marked.  We  may  now  turn  to  Sophocles,  whose 
plays  illustrate  these  changes,  and  others. 

Sophocles  was  born  about  495  B.C.  and  died  in  405.  His 
father  was  apparently  a  prosperous  manufacturer,  and  the 
boy  had  all  the  advantages  of  careful  education.  His  home 
was  at  Colonus,  a  beautiful  spot  near  Athens,  and  the  scene 
of  his  Oedipus  Coloneus.  His  affection  for  the  place  comes 
out  very  clearly  in  some  fine  lines  of  this  play.  As  a  lad  of 
fifteen  he  is  said  to  have  been  chosen  to  lead  the  paean  sung 
in  honor  of  the  victory  at  Salamis.  At  the  age  of  twenty- 
eight  he  won  his  first  prize  in  the  tragic  contests,  over  Aeschy- 
lus, and  from  that  time  on  he  was  often  in  the  first  place. 
Sophocles  held  public  office  and  took  part  in  religious  obser- 
vance, even  as  priest.  It  would  seem  that  he  possessed  a 
charm  of  personality  which  made  him  welcome  to  all,  and 
gave  him  as  happy  a  life  as  falls  to  man's  lot.  With  a  nature 
keenly  artistic,  Sophocles  found  in  the  prosperous  and  hopeful 


no  GREEK  LITERATURE 

Athens  of  his  youth  and  maturity  an  atmosphere  eminently 
suited  to  him,  and  he  is  of  all  the  poets  of  Greece  the  most  typi- 
cally Athenian.  A  man  of  this  temperament  would  never  pro- 
duce a  drama  of  Aeschylean  quality.  Perhaps  it  msiy  be  said 
that  such  work  was  out  of  his  reach,  but  it  is  truer  to  say  that 
he  would  naturally  turn,  so  far  as  the  historical  limitations  of  his 
material  would  allow  (and  this  is  an  important  reservation), 
to  the  study  of  human  character.  We  hear  of  Sophocles 
as  introducing  a  third  actor  and  giving  up  the  trilogy  as  a 
closely  linked  series  of  plays,  but  these  things  are  merely 
external,  means  to  an  end,  the  end  being  greater  dramatic 
concentration  and  a  more  distinct  portrayal  of  the  individual. 
All  this  is  thoroughly  in  the  spirit  of  the  time.  The  talk 
of  Socrates  with  the  youth  of  Athens  is  constantly  turned 
toward  the  development  of  the  individual  soul.  The  same 
thing  may  be  seen  in  progress  of  art.  From  the  middle 
of  the  fifth  century  on,  with  the  growing  skill  of  the  artists, 
a  realistic  tendency  asserts  itself,  and  soon  after  the  end  of 
the  century  the  era  of  portraiture  begins.  To  make  this  por- 
trayal of  character  efTective,  striking  scenes  are  needed,  and 
situations  which  require  the  exercise  of  judgment  and  choice. 
Hence  the  poet,  whose  attention  is  now  concentrated  on  the 
single  play,  must  give  great  heed  to  plot.  And  so  in  the  plays 
of  Sophocles  (there  exist  but  seven  out  of  the  hundred  or 
more  which  he  wrote)  we  find  a  larger  use  of  the  peripeteia, 
or  reversal  of  fortune,  of  various  types  of  anagnorisis,  or 
recognition,  and  of  the  tying  up  and  unloosing  of  the  tragic 
knot  —  all  the  elements  of  which  Aristotle  makes  so  much 
in  his  Poetics.  He  indeed  places  plot  first,  writing  clearl}^ 
under  the  strong  influence  of  Sophocles's  Oedipus  Tyrannus, 
but  to  draw  the  line  very  sharply  between  the  two  elements 
is  no  great  gain,  since,  though  character  only  becomes  ap- 
parent through  the  action  involved  in  plot,  the  nature,  of  the 
action  will  often  be  determined  by  character.  Now  Soph- 
ocles was  no  radical,  and  he  found  the  Athenian  drama  with 


TRAGEDY  111 

well-fixed  traditions ;  it  had,  moreover,  grown  up  in  close 
association  wdth  religion,  and  Sophocles  was  by  nature  reli- 
gious, with  a  regard  for  the  religious  beliefs  and  forms  of  the 
people  about  him.  It  is  not  hkely  that  he  shared  these 
beliefs  in  a  literal  sense,  but  as  a  true  poet  he  spiritualized 
the  ideal  elements  in  them.  Neither  Aeschylus  nor  Sophocles 
trouble  themselves  about  the  contradiction  which  of  course 
arises  when  the  legends  which  they  use  are  in  sharp  oppo- 
sition to  their  ideals,  though  they  may  reveal  this  opposi- 
tion in  the  background.  These  legends  are  the  accepted 
material  upon  which  the  drama  is  conditioned.  To  create 
characters,  however,  which  shall  be  real  and  which  shall  at 
the  same  time  represent  certain  fundamental  ethical  prin- 
ciples that  depend  on  man's  relation  to  a  divine  and  unseen 
world,  and  to  do  this  without  violating  the  traditions  of  the 
Attic  stage,  is  an  artistic  problem  of  extraordinary  difficulty. 
Sophocles  solved  it  with  high  success,  and  Jebb's  remark 
that  his  greatness  as  a  poet  "depends  primarily  on  his  great- 
ness as  an  artist"  ^  is  certainly  true.  All  the  seven  plays, 
though  of  varying  merit,  are  good,  and  each  has  some  charac- 
ter, not  always  the  chief  one,  who  gives  evidence  of  the  poet's 
power  in  subtle  psychological  analysis,  and  in  the  portrayal 
of  changing  feehng.  In  the  Antigone,  which,  with  the  possible 
exception  of  the  Ajax,  is  the  earliest  of  the  preserved  plays, 
the  tragic  situation  arises  out  of  the  conflict  between  human 
law,  go(xl  in  itself,  even  if  sometimes  wrongly  applied,  and 
the  unwritten  laws  (vs.  454),  begotten,  as  the  poet  says, 
not  of  man's  mortal  nature,  "Nay,  nor  shall  forgetfulness 
ever  lull  them  to  sleep ;  God  is  mighty  in  them,  and  he  grows 
not  old."  ^  The  background  of  the  play  is  thus  rather 
Aeschylean  in  character,  and  so  plain  is  the  opposition  be- 
tween the  conflicting  laws,  that  the  plot  of  the  drama  is  very 
simple.     Its  great  power,  apart  from  the  beauty  of  language 

*  Classical  Greek  Poetry,  p.  189. 

*  Oedipus  Tyrannus,  vs.  870. 


112  GREEK  LITERATURE 

and  workmanship,  lies  in  the  character  of  her  who  represents 
divine  law  —  Antigone.  In  her  Sophocles  has  certainly 
created  one  of  the  great  characters  of  literature.  She  is 
passionate  and  steadfast  in  her  devotion  to  the  right,  tender 
and  gentle  in  her  domestic  affection,  and  her  great  qualities 
of  heart  are  but  made  clearer  by  her  occasional  impatience 
with  her  weaker  sister  Ismene,  and  especially  by  her  momen- 
tary doubt  at  the  end  as  to  the  mysterious  ways  in  which  the 
gods  have  led  her.  Shortly  before  his  death  Sophocles  gave 
another  picture  of  this  beautiful  character  in  his  Oedipus 
Coloneus,  and  here  she  is  much  the  same,  only  it  is  the  picture 
of  the  patient  and  watchful  daughter  who  has  for  years 
sought  to  lighten  her  father's  burdens.  In  the  Deianeira 
of  the  Maidens  of  Trachis  we  have  another  extraordinarily 
subtle  and  very  different  dehneation  of  feminine  character. 
In  this  play,  one  of  the  later  ones,  the  action,  so  far  as  Dei- 
aneira is  concerned,  moves  on  a  purely  human  level,  and  the 
tragedy  which  overtakes  her  comes  without  the  adequate 
error  on  the  sufferer's  part  which  Aristotle  would  require. 
This,  however,  does  not  detract  from  the  picture  of  the  gentle 
and  charming  lady,  dignified,  self-controlled,  and  yet  very 
human,  which  Sophocles  has  created,  a  character  worthy 
to  be  placed  beside  the  great  gentleman  whom  he  has  given 
us  in  the  Theseus  of  the  Oedipus  Coloneus.  Another  remark- 
able study  in  character  is  the  Neoptolemus  of  the  Philoctetes, 
a  late  play,  which  has  a  romantic  tinge,  as  indeed  the  Maidens 
of  Trachis  has.  Here  the  poet  shows  the  successful  struggle 
of  a  young,  fresh,  and  unspoiled  mind  against  the  sophistries 
of  the  politician  Odysseus.  These  examples  (and  many  more 
might  be  added)  indicate  how  much  the  spirit  of  the  drama 
had  changed  in  the  matter  of  the  presentation  of  character  ^ 
since  the  days  of  Aeschylus. 

1  The  saying  attributed  to  Sophocles  (Plutarch,  De  profectibus  in  virtute,  c. 
7)  that  his  fully  developed  style  was  ■^OiKuiTarov  seems  to  show  his  conscious 
attitude  toward  this  change. 


TRAGEDY  113 

To  see  how  great  the  change  was  in  the  construction  of  the 
plot  one  has  only  to  turn  to  the  Oedipus  Tyrannus.  There 
is  no  lack  of  skilful  character-drawing  in  this  play,  but  the 
structure  of  its  plot  is  one  of  the  triumphs  of  dramatic  art. 
The  plot  and  the  characters  are,  however,  so  marvelously 
interwoven  in  the  drama's  fine  fabric  that  it  seems  almost  a 
failure  in  artistic  appreciation  to  think  of  them  separately. 
The  action  moves  with  perfect  sureness  and  chrectness  to  the 
catastrophe;  little  by  httle  the  king  draws  together  the 
different  threads  of  evidence  which  shall  reveal  his  identity, 
at  first  quite  unconsciously^,  at  last  with  a  feverish  haste  born 
of  a  suspicion  that  he  cannot  acknowledge  even  to  himself. 
No  amount  of  re-reading  seems  to  detract  from  the  absorbing 
interest  of  the  scenes  which  lead  up  to  the  fearful  revelation. 
The  choral  work  in  the  play  calls  also  for  special  remark. 
So  perfectly  do  the  choruses  sum  up  the  feeling  which  is 
awakened  by  the  dramatic  situation  at  the  point  when  each 
song  is  introduced  that  one  almost  forgets  the  historic  fact 
of  a  Greek  play's  being  made  up  of  the  two  traditional  ele- 
ments, one  lyric  and  one  dramatic.  Most  of  the  choruses, 
too,  are  of  rare  lyric  beauty. 

A  drama  of  the  character  which  Sophocles  produced  could 
not  be  presented  in  a  style  Hke  that  of  Aeschylus,  and  there 
is  some  evidence  that  Sophocles  toiled  long  before  he  devel- 
oped the  very  dehcate  diction  which  characterizes  his  dia- 
logue.^ It  is  exact,  restrained,  and  apparently  simple,  since 
the  vocabulary,  in  contrast  with  Aeschylus's,  is  that  of  every- 
day life,  but  there  are  often  subtle  shades  of  meaning  which 
lurk  beneath  the  surface.  The  simphcity  is  thus  illusive. 
This  extraordinary  skill  and  delicacy  in  the  use  of  language 
helps  Sophocles  in  his  mastery  of  the  so-called  "tragic 
irony,"  which  he  uses  more  frequently  and  with  more  sub- 
tlety than  either  Aeschylus  or  Euripides.  The  "ironical" 
phrase,  with  its  double,  ominous  meaning,  is  often  uttered 
*  See  the  passage  cited  in  the  Note  on  page  112. 


114  GREEK  LITERATURE 

by  the  victim  of  the  coming  tragedy  himself,  as  in  the  case 
of  Oedipus,  and  the  tragic  effects  of  pity  and  fear  are  thereby 
heightened  throughout  the  course  of  the  action.  The  late 
Mr.  Churton  Colhns,  in  an  essay  on  "Sophocles  and  Shake- 
speare," has  pointed  out  the  resemblances  between  them. 
These  are  very  numerous,  but  there  is  one  striking  difference. 
In  Sophocles  the  divine  background  to  the  affairs  of  men  is 
more  prominent,  more  real,  and  to  understand  the  poet's 
attitude  toward  the  mystery  of  suffering  (one  cannot  call 
it  an  explanation  of  the  mystery)  we  must  keep  in  mind  his 
perpetual  consciousness  of  a  divine  order.  W]th  Aeschylus^ 
Jtis_a£temjaw_tliat_suffering  is  the  reward  of  sin,  though  in 
the  case  of  Orestes  the  final  reconciliation  indicates  that  the 
poet  hadla]sense_pf  the  injustice  of  suffering  when  the  act 
of  the  victim  was  without  evil  intent,  ^o^bocles.  on  the 
other  hand,  clearly  holds  thatjthe^innocent  do  suffer,  and 
he  seems  to  make  a  tacit  confession  that  the  ways  of  heaven 
cannot  always  be  reconciled  to  man's  idea  of  justice.  "For 
the  wise  the  divine  decrees  are  as  riddles,  only  to  fools  is 
God  a  simple  and  quick  teacher,"  he  says  in  a  fragment 
(Nauck,  700).  But  suffering  may  not  be  wholly  evil. 
Sophocles  accepts  the  old  doctrine  that  wisdom  com£a-hy 
suffering  (TrdOu  ixdOos)^  and,  as  Professor  Butcher  has  said, 
"he  raises  it  from  a  prudential  or  moral  maxim  into  a  reli- 
gious mystery."^  Theseus  through  his  trials  has  learned 
to  say  (0.  C,  568)  to  the  aged  Oedipus,  "Well  know  I  that 
I  am  a  man,  and  that  in  the  morrow  my  portion  is  no  greater 
than  thine"  (Jebb).  Very  characteristic  of  the  poet  are 
the  famous  lines,  so  Shakespearian  in  flavor,  which  Oedipus 
addresses  to  Theseus:  — 

Fair  Aegeus'  son,  only  to  gods  in  heaven 

Comes  no  old  age  nor  death  of  anything; 

All  else  is  turmoiled  by  our  Master  Time. 

The  earth's  strength  fades  and  manhood's  glory  fades, 

'  Aspects  of  Greek  Genius,  p.  125. 


TRAGEDY  115 

Faith  dies,  and  unfaith  blossoms  as  a  flower. 
And  who  shall  find  in  the  open  streets  of  men 
Or  secret  places  of  his  heart's  own  love 
One  wind  blow  true  forever?    Lo!  or  soon 
Or  late  sweet  turns  to  bitter,  and  anon 
The  bitter  changes  once  again  to  love. 

{O.C.,  vv.  607  ff.,  G.  Murray,  except  from  "Lol"  on.) 

But  in  all  the  confusion  "Sophocles  seems,"  as  has  been  well 
said,  "to  invite  us  to  lift  our  eyes  from  the  suffering  of  the 
individual  to  a  consideration  of  the  ulterior  purpose  which 
Providence  is  seeking  to  fulfil."^  "Courage,  my  daughter, 
courage,"  says  the  chorus  to  Electra  (vs.  174),  "great  still 
in  heaven  is  Zeus,  who  sees  and  governs  all."  And  again,  in 
the  Maidens  of  Trachis  (vs.  140)  the  chorus  says  to  the  anxious 
Deianeira,  "for  who  hath  seen  Zeus  thus  unmindful  of  his 
children?"  Mercy,  too,  Sophocles  says,  Zeus  hath  to  share 
his  throne  (O.C.,  1269),  even  as  Shakespeare  enthrones  her 
"in  the  heart  of  kings."  The  serene  light  of  Sophocles  shines 
forth  in  a  verse  of  our  own  day :  — 

And  all  is  well,  though  faith  and  form 

Be  sundered  in  the  night  of  fear ; 

Well  roars  the  storm  to  those  that  hear 
A  deeper  voice  across  the  storm. 

The  atmosphere  which  one  finds  in  the  works  of  Euripides 
is  absolutely  different  from  this.  Instead  of  serenity,  there 
is  revolt.  Eurigkles  was  born  in  the  year  of  the  battle  of 
Salamis  (b.c.  480).  He  was  thus  only  fifteen  years  younger 
than  Sophocles,  and  he  died  in  406,  a  year  before  the  latter 
poet.  The  brief  biographies  which  have  come  down  to  us 
contain  much  apparently  idle  gossip,  and  it  is  not  easy  to 
separate  true  from  false.  We  gather  from  these,  in  spite 
of  the  gibes  of  Attic  Comedy,  that  the  family  of  Euripides 
was  one  of  good  standing,  and  that  he  had  the  advantages 
of  early  schooling.     Unlike  his  two  great  predecessors,  he 

*  Adam,  Religious  Teachers  of  Greece,  p.  173. 


116  GREEK  LITERATURE 

was  a  recluse  by  nature,  deeply  interested  in  the  philo- 
sophic speculation  of  his  day  and  greatly  affected  by  it. 
His  dramas  are  a  sufficient  proof  of  the  truth  of  this  tradition. 
Personally  he  was  not  popular,  and  his  plays  were  little 
appreciated  during  his  lifetime,  for  he  won  only  five  first 
prizes,  and  one  of  these  was  awarded  after  his  death.  As  a 
whole  his  life  appears  to  have  been  an  unhappy  one,  for  he 
represented  the  more  restless  spirit  'of  his  age  so  completely 
that  he  lost  touch  with  its  conservative  elements,  and  his 
attitude  was  in  large  measure  one  of  hostility  to  the  society 
about  him.  In  408  he  left  Athens,  gladly  it  would  seem,  and 
retired  to  the  court  of  Archelaus  of  Macedon.  Here  he 
appears  to  have  been  happier,  for  his  last  two  plays,  the 
Bacchae  and  Iphigeneia  at  Aulis  (the  latter  unfinished),  are 
without  the  gloom  that  chngs  to  several  of  the  dramas  dating 
from  the  last  years  of  his  Athenian  life.  Out  of  some  ninety- 
two  plays  we  have  eighteen  —  a  large  proportion  in  com- 
parison with  the  seven  each  from  Aeschylus  and  Sophocles. 
This  fact  is  due  to  the  great  popularity  of  Euripides  in  the 
years  following  his  death,  for  he  has  qualities  which  suited 
the  taste  of  the  Alexandrian  period. 

It  is  well-nigh  impossible  to  avoid  giving  an  unfair  impres- 
sion of  Euripides  in  any  brief  characterization  of  his  work. 
His  faults  are  easy  to  perceive;  to  appreciate  his  greatness 
requires  study,  (fin  the  matter  of  form  he  introduced  the 
prologue  which  tells  the  story  of  the  myth  and  explains  the 
beginning  of  the  action.  Many  of  the  present  prologues 
are  probably  elaborated  to  suit  the  needs  of  non-Attic  au- 
diences, but  the  use  of  this  opening  is  Euripidean.;  One  may 
find  fault  with  it,  but  the  fault  is  after  all  not  radical.  Eurip- 
ides, in  many  cases,  closes  his  dramas  by  the  interference  of 
divine  power,  the  deus  ex  machina,  or  by  a  prophecy.  One 
can  hardly  dispute  the  truth  of  Aristotle's  (Poet.,  xv)  obser- 
vation that  such  devices,  if  used,  should  be  for  matters  exter- 
nal to  the  action.     It  is  difficult  to  see  why  Euripides  so 


TRAGEDY  117 

frequently  made  this  histrionic  appeal  to  divine  agency,  since 
in  many  cases  he  might  easily  have  avoided  it.  Possibly  one 
of  his  reasons  was  to  counteract  the  popular  prejudice 
against  his  supposed  atheism;  or  perhaps  the  human  in- 
stinct which  makes  inherited  forms  survive  belief  had  some- 
thing to  do  with  it,  and  the  poet,  while  making  very 
plain  his  disbelief  in  the  worth  of  the  traditional  mythology, 
was  himself  not  ready  to  put  aside  the  historic  atmosphere 
of  the  Attic  drama.  He  was  indeed  something  of  an  anti- 
quarian. On  the  whole,  then,  with  one  or  two  exceptions, 
the  plots  of  Euripides  are  less  well  constructed  than  those  of 
Sophocles ;  but  in  the  dramatic  vividness,  intensity,  and 
pathos  of  some  of  the  scenes  the  younger  poet  is  unsurpassed, 
and  he  often  uses  the  so-called  "recognition"  with  splendid 
effect.  In  delineation  of  character,  too,  Euripides  has  great 
power.  Such  virgin-martyrs  as  Macaria  in  the  Heradidae, 
Polyxena  in  the  Hecuba,  and  Iphigenia  in  the  Iphigenia 
at  Aulis  are  nobly  conceived  and  beautifully  portrayed. 
Among  his  men  there  are  none  so  interesting  as  the  Oedipus 
and  Neoptolemus  of  Sophocles,  though,  within  their  lesser 
range,  Ion  and  the  fine  peasant  of  the  Electra  are  well  drawn 
and  attractive.  But  the  impatience  of  Euripides  with  the 
popular  religion,  and  his  own  philosophic  bent  of  mind,  often 
injure  the  consistency  of  his  characters.  To  take  an  instance 
from  the  Ion,  a  play  which  has  real  romantic  beauty :  Ion 
is  the  natural  son  of  Creusa,  daughter  of  Erechtheus,  king  of 
Athens,  by  Apollo,  who  had  done  the  maid  violence.  The 
child  was  exposed  to  death,  but  was  spirited  away  by  Apollo 
to  Delphi,  where  he  was  brought  up  as  a  temple  ministrant 
in  holy  innocence.  The  mother,  supposing  the  child  dead, 
comes  to  Delphi  in  after  years  to  consult  the  oracle,  and  Ion 
hears  the  old  tale  of  wrong,  without  knowing  how  he  is  con- 
cerned in  it.  Now  the  play  opens  with  a  most  beautiful 
and  romantic  picture  of  Ion's  innocent  and  peaceful  life  at 
Deli)hi  —  there  are  few  things  more  charming  in  Greek  lit' 


118  GREEK  LITERATURE 

erature  —  but  as  soon  as  he  hears  of  the  god's  deed,  he  breaks 
forth  in  this  wise  :  — 

But  there  is  need,  methinks,  to  expostulate 

With  Phoebus.     What  is  this  ?     To  force  a  maid 

And  then  abandon  !     Leave  the  helpless  fruit 

Of  stolen  joys  to  perish  !     Nay,  O  Lord,  I 

Seek  rather  to  be  good  as  thou  art  strong. 

For  wickedness  in  man  the  gods  chastise :  I 

What  justice  then  that  ye,  who  set  the  law  j 

To  mortal  man,  should  sin  against  the  law  ?  i 

If,  if  (to  feign  a  thing  impossible)  j 

For  sueh-hke  thefts  upon  humanity 

Thou,  or  Poseidon,  or  the  King  of  Heaven, 

Should  be  amerced ;   to  quit  the  fines  w^ould  leave 

Your  temples  empty.     Ye,  to  have  your  will. 

Do  thoughtless  wrong :   then  just  it  is  to  blame 

Not  imitative  man,  but  them  whose  taste 

Instructs  our  admiration  what  to  ape. 

(Vv.  436ff.  Verrall.) 

This  passage  not  only  shows  lack  of  consistency  in  drawing 
the  character  of  Ion,  but  it  also  illustrates  how  ready  Eurip- 
ides is  to  bring  forward  the  grosser  side  of  Greek  legend,  and 
to  discredit  the  religion  he  did  not  believe  in.  This  is  of 
course  the  exact  opposite  of  the  attitude  in  such  matters  of 
Aeschylus  and  Sophocles.  Euripides  is  out  of  harmony  with 
his  material,  and  his  eager  and  restless  searching  after  truth  ob- 
scures his  sense  of  artistic  possibility.  The  modem  conception 
of  Tragedy  cannot  be  bounded  by  any  cycle  of  legends,  and 
Euripides  is  the  herald  to  the  new  era,  although  the  seed  of 
the  new  growth  may  indeed  be  found  in  the  subtle  portrayal 
of  character  in  Sophocles.  Euripides  has  also  another  ten- 
dency which  sometimes  injures  the  effect  of  his  characters. 
This  is  a  fondness  for  the  sophistic  rhetoric  of  debate  in  which 
heroic  personages  approximate  in  their  diction  and  thought  to- 
ward the  "man  in  the  street."  Incongruity  is  the  result,  and 
offense  to  conservative  taste  (and  good  taste  for  that  matter), 


TRAGEDY  119 

as  the  gibes  of  Aristophanes  show.  Aristotle  {Poet.,  XXV) 
quotes  Sophocles  as  saying  that  he  himself  made  people  as 
they  ought  jto^be.  {i.e.  ought  to  be  to  meet  the  dramatic  re- 
quirements) ;  Euripides  made  them  as  they  are.  But  a  mili- 
tant realism  is"not  compatible  A\ith  heroic  ideals.  Euripides 
also  changed  the  function  of  the  chorus  by  separating  it  in 
great  measure  from  the  dramatic  action,  thus  making  its 
songs  often  merely  interludes.  The  change  was  very  likely 
partlj^  due  to  the  influence  of  the  new  and  more  elaborate 
school  of  music  which  came  in  at  this  time,  bringing  with  it 
a  taste  for  monodies  in  the  drama.  By  this  method  Eurip- 
ides often  attains  to  splendid  choral  effects,  but  he  writes 
the  swan-song  of  the  chorus  as  an  integral  part  of  the  drama. 
The  comic  side  of  some  of  these  innovations  is  amusingly 
put  by  Aristophanes  in  the  Frogs.  Euripides,  and  to  some 
extent  Dionysus,  are  accusing  Aeschylus  of  using  overloaded 
language  and  of  introducing  preposterous  hybrid  animals 
into  his  plays.  So  Aeschylus  says  to  Euripides :  "  What 
then  is  your  practice?  "     The  latter  replies  :  — 

No  cock-horse  in  my  plays,  by  Zeus,  no  goat-stag  there  you'll  see, 
Such  figures  as  are  blazoned  forth  in  Median  tapistry. 
When  I  first  took  the  art  from  you,  bloated  and  swoln,  poor  thing, 
With  turgid  gasconading  words  and  heavy  dieting. 
First  I  reduced  and  toned  her  down,  and  made  her  slim  and  neat 
With  wordlets  and  with  exercise  and  poultices  of  beet, 
And  next  a  dose  of  chatter-juice,  distilled  from  books,  I  gave  her, 
And  monodies  she  took,  with  sharp  Cephisophon  for  fiavor. 
I  never  used  haphazard  words,  or  plunged  abruptly  in ; 
Who  entered  first  explained  at  large  the  drama's  origin. 
******* 

Canons  of  verse  I  introduced,  and  neatly  chiseled  wit ; 

To  look,  to  scan  :   to  plot,  to  plan :   to  twist,  to  turn,  to  woo : 

On  all  to  spy ;  in  all  to  pry.   Aesch.   You  did  :  I  say  so  too. 

EuRip.    I  showed  them  scenes  of  common  life,  the  things  we  know 
and  see. 
Where  any  blunder  would  at  once  by  all  detected  be. 

(Vv.  737  £f.  Rogers.) 


120  GREEK    LITERATURE 

With  all  his  admitted  faults,  then,  wherein  lies  the  claim  of 
Euripides  to  be  considered  a  very  great  poet  ?  As  the  prophet 
of  a  new  era  he  of  course  has  great  historic  importance,  and 
his  mind  is  as  a  mirror  to  reflect  the  deepest  thought  of  his 
day.  Hecuba's  invocation  to  Zeus  in  the  Troades  (she  has 
been  to  school  in  Athens,  Mr.  Adam  remarks  0  illustrates 
this  latter  fact :  — • 

O  earth's  Upbearer,  thou  whose  throne  is  Earth, 
Whoe'er  thou  be,  O  past  our  finding  out, 
Zeus,  be  thou  Nature's  Law,  or  mind  of  man, 
To  thee  I  pray ;   for  treading  soundless  paths. 
In  justice  dost  thou  guide  all  mortal  things. 

(Vv.  884  ff.  Way.) 

Here  is  a  sort  of  epitome  of  the  philosophical  questions  of  the 
time;  but  it  is  in  the  last  line  that  the  poet  reveals  one  of 
the  great  foundations  of  his  power,  the  passion  for  Justice, 
and  justice  to  suffering  humanity.  "Think  you,"  he  says 
in  a  fragment  (Nauck,  508)  of  very  modern  tone  :  — 

Think  you  that  deeds  of  wrong  spring  to  the  gods 
On  wings,  and  then  some  one,  on  Zeus's  book 
Writes  them,  and  Zeus  beholding  the  record 
Gives  judgment  ?•     Nay,  the  whole  expanse  of  heaven 
Would  not  suffice,  if  Zeus  wrote  there  man's  sins ; 
Nor  could  he  send  to  each  his  punishment 
From  such  review.     Justice  is  on  the  earth. 
Is  here,  is  by  us,  if  men  will  but  see." 

(Westcott.) 

C  This  deep  sympathy  with  man's  life,  of  which  we  have  a 
gentler  expression  in  the  later  poetry  of  the  Anthology  and  of 
Theocritus  (cf.  Idyl  XXI),  when  combined,  as  it  often  is  in 
Euripides,  with  great  intensity  of  tragic  feeling,  with  splendid 
power  of  language  and  of  vivid  expression,  raises  the  best  of 
his  poetry  to  the  level  of  great  art.     It  is  a  significant  fact 

^Religious  Teachers  of  Greece,  p.  299. 


TRAGEDY  121 

that  in  the  early  years  of  the  last  century,  perhaps  partly 
under  the  influence  of  the  German  critic,  August  Wilhelm 
von  Schlegel,  Euripides  suffered  a  sort  of  eclipse.  With  the 
growth  of  the  humanitarian  movement  which  characterizes 
the  latter  part  of  the  last  century  and  the  present  one,  his 
real  greatness  has  again  been  recognized,  and  his  admirers 
have  become  many  and  enthusiastic.  Here  is  concrete 
testimony  to  his  universal  power.  Euripides  lights  up 
many  of  his  plays  with  a  romantic  charm,  and  he  shows  an 
intense  feeHng  for  the  influence  of  nature.  Neither  Aeschy- 
lus nor  Sophocles  lacks  a  keen  sense  of  natural  beauty,  but  in 
Euripides  nature  seems  a  more  objective  thing  around  which 
the  poet's  fancy  loves  to  play.  The  Bacchae,  one  of  the  finest  of 
all  Greek  plays,  is  filled  with  this  feeling.  The  poet,  old  man 
as  he  was  when  he  wrote  it,  has  caught  the  note  of  the  wood- 
land. The  hills  of  Macedonia  have  made  him  young  again, 
and  in  the  Dionysiac  gospel  of  enthusiasm  he  has  found  life. 
The  following  beautiful  rendering  of  one  of  the  odes  from  this 
play  (vv.  863  ff.),  by  Professor  Murray,  well  sums  up  many  of 
the  qualities  of  Euripides  which  I  have  tried  to  bring  out. 

The  damsels  of  the  chorus  sing  first  in  the  spirit  of  Bacchic 
frenzy,  and  of  intense  longing  for  the  solitudes  of  the  w'ood- 
land.  Shall  they  escape  to  the  peaceful  forest  as  the  fawn 
which  eludes  its  pursuers?  The  refrain,  I  believe,  is  an 
exaltation  of  vengeance,  so  that  here,  too,  the  spirit  is  more  or 
less  that  of  the  frenzied  Bacchanal.  Its  closing  line  is  pro- 
verbial and  is  associated  with  Theban  legend  as  the  burden 
of  the  song  at  the  wedding  of  Cadmus.  Professor  Murray, 
however,  interprets  the  refrain  somewhat  differently.  In 
the  latter  part  of  the  song  the  tone  changes.  Here  the  poet's 
thought  is  lifted  up  into  the  more  spiritual  regions  of  the 
idealized  religion  of  Dionysus.  The  gods  will  not  suffer 
unrighteousness  to  be ;  have  faith  in  the  divine  strength  of 
that  which  in  the  long  ages  has  become  the  law  and  which 
is  grounded  in  nature.     Yet  is  life  sad,  and  its  good  things 


122  GREEK  LITERATURE 

fall  to  men  in  no  equal  portions.     Hope  finds  happy  issue 
and  hope  deceives,  "  one  step  enough  for  me." 

Some  maidens 

Will  they  ever  come  to  me,  ever  again, 

The  long  long  dances, 
On  through  the  dark  till  the  dim  stars  wane  ? 
Shall  I  feel  the  dew  on  my  throat,  and  the  stream 
Of  wind  in  my  hair  ?     Shall  our  white  feet  gleam 

In  the  dim  expanses  ? 
Oh,  feet  of  a  fawn  to  the  greenwood  fled, 

Alone  in  the  grass  and  the  loveliness  ; 
Leap  of  the  hunted,  no  more  in  dread. 

Beyond  the  snares  and  the  deadly  press : 
Yet  a  voice  still  in  the  distance  sounds, 
A  voice  and  a  fear  and  a  haste  of  hounds ; 
O  wildly  laboring,  fiercely  fleet, 

Onward  yet  by  river  and  glen.  .  .  . 
Is  it  joy  or  terror,  ye  storm-swift  feet  ?  .  .  . 

To  the  dear  lone  lands  untroubled  of  men, 
Where  no  voice  sounds,  and  amid  the  shadowy  green 
The  little  things  of  the  woodland  live  unseen. 

What  else  is  wisdom  ?     What  of  man's  endeavour 
Or  God's  high  grace,  so  lovely  and  so  great  ? 
To  stand  from  fear  set  free,  to  breathe  and  wait ; 
To  hold  a  hand  uplifted  over  Hate ; 

And  shall  not  Loveliness  be  loved  forever  ?  ^ 

Others 

O  Strength  of  God,  slow  art  thou  and  still, 

Yet  failest  never  ! 
On  them  that  worship  the  Ruthless  Will, 
On  them  that  dream,  doth  His  judgment  wait. 
Dreams  of  the  proud  man,  making  great 

And  greater  ever. 
Things  which  are  not  of  God.     In  wide 

And  devious  coverts,  hunter-wise, 

1  The  meaning  of  the  Greek  is  more  exactly,  "What  is  wisdom,  or  what 
fairer  boon  hath  God  given  mortals  than  to  raise  the  hand  in  victory  o'er 
the  foe  ?     What  is  fair  is  loved  forever.'* 


TRAGEDY  123 

He  coucheth  Time's  unhasting  stride, 

Following,  following  him  whose  eyes 
Look  not  to  Heaven.     For  all  is  vain. 
The  pulse  of  the  heart,  the  plot  of  the  brain, 
That  striveth  bej'ond  the  laws  that  live. 
And  is  thy  faith  so  much  to  give, 
Is  it  so  hard  a  thing  to  see. 
That  the  Spirit  of  God,  whate'er  it  be, 
The  Law  that  abides  and  changes  not,  ages  long, 
The  Eternal  and  Nature-born  —  these  things  be  strong? 

What  else  is  Wisdom  ?     What  of  man's  endeavour 
Or  God's  high  grace,  so  lovely  and  so  great  ? 
To  stand  from  fear  set  free,  to  breathe  and  wait ; 
To  hold  a  hand  uplifted  over  Hate ; 

And  shall  not  Loveliness  be  loved  forever  ? 

Leader 

Happy  he,  on  the  weary  sea. 
Who  hath  fled  the  tempest  and  won  the  haven. 

Happy  whoso  hath  risen,  free. 
Above  his  striving.     For  strangely  graven 

Is  the  orb  of  life,  that  one  and  another 

In  gold  and  power  may  outpass  his  brother. 

And  men  in  their  millions  float  and  flow 
And  seethe  with  a  million  hopes  as  leaven  ; 

And  they  win  their  Will  or  they  miss  their  Will, 

And  the  hopes  are  dead  or  are  pined  for  still ; 

But  whoe'er  can  know, 

As  the  long  days  go. 
That  to  Live  is  happy,  hath  found  his  Heaven  !* 

Such    are    the  voices  of    these  three   great   "  Bards   of 
Passion," 

."Voices  of  unreturning  days,  which  breathe 
The  spirit  of  a  day  that  never  dies." 

J.  R.  Wheeler. 


'  The  meaning  of  the  Greek  ia,  "Him  I  count  blessed  whose  life  is  happy 
from  day  to  day.'l 


COMEDY 

In  a  romantic  wooded  dell  on  the  northeast  slopes  of  Mt. 
Pentelicus,  a  short  half-day's  journey  from  Athens,  lie  the 
scanty  remains  of  a  little  village  which  should  be  the  Mecca 
of  all  lovers  of  the  drama,  for  it  is  the  legendary  birthplace 
of  both  tragedy  and  comedy.  The  peasants  who  now  Hve  in 
this  beautiful  valley  call  the  place  "Dionyso"  —  a  lingering 
reminiscence  of  the  cult  of  the  wine-god,  which  had  here  its 
most  ancient  seat  in  Attica.  On  this  site,  something  over 
twenty  years  ago,  enthusiastic  young  students  of  the  Ameri- 
can School  at  Athens,  under  the  guidance  of  a  distinguished 
scholar  of  Columbia  University,  Professor  A.  C,  Merriam, 
sought  and  found  the  old  Attic  deme  of  Icaria,  the  place 
where,  as  tradition  says,  the  hero  Icarius  once  received  the 
god  Dionysus  into  his  home.  In  return  for  his  hospitality 
Icarius  received  the  gift  of  the  vine.  To  the  inhabitants 
of  Icaria  the  worship  of  Dionysus  became  a  priceless  heritage. 
Centuries  after  the  cult  was  established,  it  is  said  that  the 
poet  Susarion  came  from  Megara,  gathered  together  a  group 
of  Icarians,  and  organized  the  first  comic  chorus  —  an  event 
which  tradition  places  in  the  first  half  of  the  sixth  century 
before  Christ.  A  half  century  later,  in  the  year  534,  a  native 
of  Icaria,  Thespis,  gave  the  first  tragic  performance  in  Athens, 
at  the  newly  established  spring  festival  of  Dionysus.  Once 
again,  when  tragedy  was  being  transformed  by  the  master 
hand  of  Aeschylus  into  the  most  perfect  expression  of  the 
literary  genius  of  the  Greek  race,  Icaria  gave  to  Athens  an- 
other of  her  sons,  Magnes ;  his  name  stands  second  among 
the  comic  poets  who  in  later  times  were  remembered  as  hav- 

124 


COMEDY  125 

ing  contributed  notably  to  the  development  of  Attic  Comedy. 
It  is  small  wonder  that,  with  such  traditions  and  such  achieve- 
ment, this  obscure  mountain  village  was  credited  by  the 
ancients  with  the  unique  distinction  of  having  originated  the 
two  great  branches  of  the  classical  drama. 

But  the  tradition  which  names  the  birthplace  and  the 
earhest  poet,  or  rather  chorus-leader,  of  Attic  Comedy,  does 
not  tell  us  the  processes  and  stages  by  which  Comedy  came 
into  being  and  developed  into  a  branch  of  literature  worthy 
to  take  its  place  by  the  side  of  its  sister,  Tragedy.  A  literary 
form  is  not  born  full-fledged  at  a  particular  time  and  place. 
It  arises  out  of  certain  conditions,  must  go  through  slow 
stages  of  growth,  must  adjust  itself  to  its  environment,  and 
finally  receives  the  perfecting  touch  of  some  master  artist. 
If  a  contemporary  had  left  us  a  description  of  the  rude  per- 
formance of  Susarion's  chorus  of  Icarians,  although  some  of 
the  lineaments  of  the  Attic  Comedy  as  it  is  known  to  us  would 
probably  be  traceable  to  the  discerning  eye,  as  the  zoologist 
detects  in  the  embryo  the  rudiments  of  the  body  that  is  to 
be  born,  yet  no  doubt  these  lineaments  would  have  been  so 
strangely  out  of  proportion  as  to  seem  incapable  of  being 
molded  into  a  symmetrical,  well-organized  body. 

We  have  no  complete  specimen  of  the  Attic  Comedy  earlier 
than  the  Acharnians  of  Aristophanes,  brought  out  in  425  B.C. 
Of  the  Attic  predecessors  of  Aristophanes  we  possess  a  few 
hundred  lines  quoted  from  many  different  plays,  none  of 
which,  probably,  is  as  early  as  450  B.C.  Of  the  great  Sicilian 
poet  Epicharmus,  who  by  the  united  testimony  of  antiquity 
is  entitled  to  be  called  the  true  founder  of  a  literary  comedy 
among  the  Greeks,  some  two  hundred  lines  have  come  down 
to  us  in  quotations,  together  with  a  number  of  representative 
titles  of  his  plays.  These  carry  us  back  to  the  early  years  of 
the  fifth  century.  From  these  fragments  and  from  the 
eleven  extant  plays  of  Aristophanes  we  should  not  be  able 
to  derive  much  precise  information  regarding  the  origins  of 


126  GREEK   LITERATURE 

this  branch  of  Uterature.  Fortunately,  however,  we  have 
other  sources  of  information,  notably  several  valuable  state- 
ments by  Aristotle  and  other  Greek  writers,  comic  scenes 
from  early  vase-paintings,  and  figurines  of  comic  performers. 
With  the  help  of  all  these,  and  more  particularly  by  the  study 
of  the  complex  forms  of  the  extant  comedies  of  Aristophanes, 
in  which  survivals  of  early  elements  have  been  detected, 
some  progress  has  been  made  in  recent  years  toward  the  solu- 
tion of  the  interesting  problem  of  origin,  and  the  region  of 
pure  conjecture  has  been  appreciably  narrowed. 

But  the  details  of  this  problem,  however  fascinating  for  the 
student  of  literary  history,  cannot  engage  our  attention  on 
this  occasion,  except  in  so  far  as  an  understanding  of  the 
beginnings  of  comedy  among  the  Greeks  is  essential  to  our 
present  purpose,  which  is  to  give  an  intelhgible  account  of 
the  character  and  spirit  and  permanent  achievements  of  the 
Attic  Comedy  at  its  two  great  epochs,  separated  from  each 
other  by  the  space  of  a  century,  and  represented  by  the  names 
of  Aristophanes  and  Menander  respectively.  It  should  be 
made  apparent  in  the  course  of  this  lecture  that  the  comedy 
of  Aristophanes  and  his  contemporaries,  though  unique  in 
its  kind  in  the  history  of  literature,  though  at  first  view  law- 
less and  undisciplined  in  spirit  as  in  form  and  structure,  was, 
on  the  one  hand,  considered  as  an  organic  structure,  a  direct 
descendant  of  the  primitive  rites  and  practices  that  grew 
up  in  connection  with  the  worship  of  Dionysus,  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  from  the  point  of  view  of  spirit  and  content, 
was  the  legitimate  product  of  the  social  and  political  con- 
ditions of  the  time  in  which  it  flourished ;  furthermore, 
that  the  comedy  of  manners  of  Menander  and  his  con- 
temporaries, which  proved  to  be  one  of  the  greatest  con- 
tributions of  Hellenism  to  the  hterature  of  Europe,  in  its 
turn  also  owed  something  of  its  universal  character,  so 
strikingly  in  contrast  with  the  transient  and  local  character 
of  the  old  political  comedy,  to  the  cosmopolitan  society  in  the 


COMEDY  127 

midst  of  which  it  came  into  being ;  and,  finally,  that  the  line 
of  descent  from  the  beginning  down  to  Menander  is  direct 
and  unbroken. 

The  word  "comedy,"  Kw/xwSt'a,  means  "comus-song,"  "the 
song  of  the  comus."  The  name  itself  is  modeled  on  the 
pattern  of  "tragedy"  —  "goat-song"  or  "the  song  of  the 
satyrs" ;  for  tragedy  developed  and  received  a  name  earlier 
than  comedy.  The  comus  was  an  ancient  institution  in 
Attica  —  a  band  of  mirthful  revellers  who  made  merry  in 
their  own  way  at  the  winter  festival  of  Dionysus,  at  the  time 
when  the  new  wine  was  broached.  Dressed  in  fantastic 
costumes,  preferably  representing  themselves  as  animals  — 
birds,  frogs,  horses,  and  the  like  —  they  sang  impromptu 
songs  accompanied  by  lively  dancing.  On  their  first  appear- 
ance their  leader  addressed  the  bystanders,  then  the  mas- 
queraders  sang  their  songs  alternately  with  the  speeches 
chanted  by  their  leader.  At  the  end  of  the  performance  the 
troupe  marched  gaily  away,  led  by  the  flute-player,  singing 
and  dancing  as  they  retired. 

The  chorus  of  the  Old  Attic  Comedy  seems  to  have  devel- 
oped out  of  this  ancient  Dionysiac  comus.  In  the  perfected 
comedy  of  the  period  of  Aristophanes  we  see  many  of  the 
characteristics  of  the  primitive  comus:  the  same  mas- 
querade, with  a  marked  predilection  for  animal  masks,  the 
same  exuberant  vitality  revealing  itself  in  both  song  and 
dance,  the  same  frankness  of  appeal  to  the  spectators,  the 
same  alternation  of  speeches  on  the  part  of  the  leaders  of  the 
half-choruses  with  songs  by  the  half-choruses,  and  the  same 
jolly  procession  at  the  close.  In  the  prologue,  and  in  the 
stasima  which  separate  the  several  episodes,  the  influence  of 
tragedy  is  undoubtedly  to  be  recognized ;  but  the  structure 
which  is  peculiar  to  the  portion  of  the  play  that  falls  between 
the  prologue  and  the  end  of  the  parabasis,  and  also  the 
merry  revel  or  ballet  of  the  exodos,  bear  the  unmistakable 
marks  of  an  independent  origin,  and  this  origin  has  been 


128  GREEK  LITERATURE 

found  in  the  comus  of  masqueraders  from  which  the  word 
''comedy"  is  derived.^ 

The  plot  of  a  typical  play  of  the  early  period  of  Aristoph- 
anes is  generally  unfolded  by  means  of  the  presence  upon 
the  scene  of  two  conflicting  elements,  the  representatives  of 
opposing  principles.  After  the  situation  in  which  the  char- 
acters find  themselves  has  been  revealed  to  the  spectators  in 
the  first  part  of  the  prologue,  spoken  by  one  or  two  actors, 
a  plan  is  suggested  by  one  of  the  actors,  and  measures  are 
forthwith  taken  to  put  the  plan  into  effect.  But  the  natural 
march  of  events  is  interrupted  at  the  very  beginning  by  the 
introduction  of  the  opposing  element,  whether  actor  or  chorus, 
and  this  opposition  is  represented  in  action  as  soon  as  the 
chorus  comes  marching  in.  The  opposing  principles  are 
brought  into  collision.  A  conflict  of  words  or  of  fists  ensues. 
The  chorus  is  always  interested  in  the  struggle,  and  is  often 
an  active  participant  in  it.  After  a  scene  of  wild  excitement, 
in  which  each  party  fights  frantically  for  its  cause,  there 
follows  a  pause  in  the  action.  The  question  at  issue  is  sub- 
mitted to  judicial  arbitration.  In  a  lively  debate  speech  is 
answered  by  speech,  with  intercalated  jests  by  a  third  party, 
who  plays  the  part  of  buffoon  or  clown.  A  decision  is  ren- 
dered; one  or  the  other  side  wins.  This  is  the  solution  of 
the  plot,  the  true  catastrophe  of  the  play.  Then  follows  the 
parabasis.  The  actors  leave  the  scene  and  the  chorus  marches 
forward  and  addresses  the  spectators.  In  the  first  part  of 
the  parabasis  the  chorus  leader  drops  his  mask  and  speaks 
as  the  poet's  mouthpiece  on  the  poet's  fife  and  circumstances, 
on  his  ideals  and  hopes,  or  on  his  relations  to  his  rivals  and 

1  In  a  valuable  study  on  "Les  origines  et  la  structure  technique  de  la 
comedie  ancienne,  "  which  has  just  appeared  in  the  Revue  des  etudes  anciennes 
(XIII,  1911,  pp.  1  ff.),  Professor  Octave  Navarre  submits  to  a  critical  dis- 
cussion the  question  of  the  origin  of  the  several  parts  of  the  Old  Comedy. 
I  am  glad  to  find  myself  in  agreement  with  him  on  many  essential  points, 
especially  as  regards  the  contributions  made  respectively  by  the  Attic  comus 
and  the  Sicilian  comedy  to  the  composite  structure  of  the  Old  Comedy. 


COMEDY  129 

the  public.  In  the  second  part  of  the  parabasis  the  bal- 
anced structure  which  we  have  seen  in  the  debate  which  fol- 
lows the  conflict,  is  again  assumed :  amoebaeic  lyrics  by  the 
two  half-choruses  alternate  with  balancing  recitations  by  their 
respective  leaders.  The  mask  of  the  chorus  is  preserved  in 
this  part,  the  leaders  speaking  in  their  characters  as  wasps, 
birds,  or  whatever  they  and  their  choruses  are  conceived  to 
be.  After  the  parabasis  comes  a  succession  of  short  episodes, 
usually  not  at  all  necessary  to  the  plot.  A  comic  person, 
generally  the  leading  figure  in  the  first  part  of  the  play,  stands 
there,  always  in  close  touch  with  the  audience,  and  goes 
through  a  series  of  encounters  with  a  motley  variety  of  per- 
sons, who  stray  in  on  one  pretext  or  another.  It  is  the  poet's 
way  of  illustrating  in  burlesque  the  advantages  of  the  prin- 
ciple or  policy  which  has  gained  the  upper  hand  in  the  pre- 
ceding conflict. 

A  play  of  Aristophanes  has  been  characterized  ^  as  a  "  dram- 
atized debate."  This  description,  however,  applies  only 
to  about  one-third  of  the  play.  All  that  precedes  the  mock 
conflict  and  debate  is  introductory,  all  that  follows  —  the 
victors'  jollification  —  is  more  or  less  irrelevant  horse-play. 
From  the  time  of  its  entrance  to  the  end  of  the  parabasis  the 
chorus  dominates  the  scene.  But  in  the  loosely  connected 
burlesque  scenes  which  fill  the  last  half  of  the  play  the  chorus 
sinks  into  relative  insignificance  until  the  procession  at  the 
end,  and  its  mask  is  no  longer  significant  in  the  action. 
Furthermore,  the  two  parts  of  the  play  stand  out  in  sharp 
contrast  to  each  other  structurally.  The  first  part  is  char- 
acterized by  parallelism  in  arrangement,  natural  in  a  debate, 
speech  answering  to  speech,  ode  to  ode  ;  the  second  by  a  com- 
position similar  to  that  in  tragedy,  episode  following  episode 
with  choral  songs  between.  Furthermore,  the  balanced  part 
uses  long  tetrameter  lines,  the  episodes  the  more  conver- 
sational trimeter.     If  the  paired  or  double  portion,  which 

•  Butcher,  Aristotle's  Theory  of  Poetry,  p.  372. 


130  GREEK  LITERATURE 

constitutes  the  real  plot  of  a  play  of  Aristophanes,  is  rightly 
traced  back  to  the  masquerading  comus  of  Dionysiac  rev- 
ellers, to  what  origin  shall  we  ascribe  the  single  or  unpaired 
portion,  the  loosely  attached  episodes  after  the  parabasis, 
which  could  so  readily  be  spared  so  far  as  the  plot  is  concerned? 

Scholars  have  found  the  answer  to  this  question  in  the 
Dorian  comedy,  especially  as  it  was  perfected  by  the  genius 
of  the  great  Sicihan  poet,  Epicharmus.  Aristotle  tells  us 
that  the  fable  or  plot  was  brought  into  comedy  by  Epichar- 
mus, and  Plato  calls  him  the  "prince  of  comedy,"  placing 
him  in  the  same  category  of  archegetes  with  Homer,  Epi- 
charmus flourished  about  500  B.C.  His  fame  as  a  comic  poet 
had  spread  among  the  Greeks  some  time  before  comedy  at 
Athens  had  reached  a  stage  of  development  which  entitled 
it  to  admission,  under  the  patronage  of  the  state,  into  the 
official  programme  of  the  great  spring  festival  of  Dionysus 
—  an  event  which  is  dated  about  486  b.c.  In  the  year  485, 
after  his  home  town  of  Hyblaean  Megara  was  destroyed,  Epi- 
charmus took  up  his  residence  in  Syracuse.  There,  in  the 
brilhant  court  of  Hiero,  he  must  have  met  Pindar,  Simonides, 
Bacchylides,  and  Aeschylus,  and  perhaps  it  was  through 
Aeschylus  that  the  knowledge  of  his  achievement  in  comedy 
came  to  Athens.  At  any  rate  his  comedy,  either  then  or 
later,  became  a  formative  factor  in  the  development  of  Attic 
comedy. 

Among  the  Dorian  peoples  of  the  Peloponnesus,  where 
Dionysus  was  worshiped  as  the  god  of  fertility,  a  kind  of 
sport  was  practised  at  his  festivals  which,  though  similar  in 
some  respects  to  the  Attic  comus,  was  in  some  essential  par- 
ticulars different,  and  contained  the  germs  of  a  distinct  de- 
velopment. In  Corinth  and  elsewhere  men  dressed  them- 
selves up  as  goblin-like  creatures,  their  faces  stained  with 
wine-lees,  their  bodies  ludicrously  padded  behind  and  in 
front  and  equipped  with  obscene  appendages.  The  pictures 
and  descriptions  which  we  have  of  these  grotesque  and  lusty 


COMEDY  131 

followers  of  Dionysus  show  that  they  indulged  in  boisterous, 
obscene  dances,  and  suggest  that  the  songs  they  sang  were 
of  like  character.  We  are  told,  too,  that  in  Sparta  were 
acted  improvised  character-sketches  of  comic  types  taken 
from  daily  life.  In  Megara  these  performances  took  on 
some  kind  of  dramatic  form,  and  during  the  regime  of  the 
democrac}^  there,  in  the  early  part  of  the  sixth  century,  it 
is  probable  that  political  satire  became  a  recognized  ingre- 
chent  of  their  buffoonery.  Tradition  saj'S  that  Susarion, 
who  first  organized  a  comic  chorus  in  Attica,  was  a  native 
of  Megara.  However  this  may  be,  the  ribald  exhibition  of 
the  imps  of  Dionysus  did  not  grow  into  anything  literary 
on  the  Greek  mainland,  but  only  in  Southern  Italy  and  in 
Sicily,  whither  it  was  transplanted  by  Dorian  colonists.  The 
mythological  travesty  in  southern  Italy  and  the  Atellane 
farce  in  the  Oscan  Campagna  are  witnesses  to  the  persistence 
of  the  so-called  ''Dorian  Comedy"  in  its  new  home,  and  to 
the  Italian  Greeks'  natural  gift  for  the  farce  and  the  bur- 
lesque. From  the  same  stock  sprang  the  comedy  of  Epi- 
charmus  toward  the  end  of  the  sixth  century. 

The  comedy  of  Epicharmus  seems  to  have  been  a  stage 
performance  from  the  first,  no  longer  associated  with  the 
worship  of  Dionysus.  The  subjects  which  he  chose  for  por- 
trayal were  partly  mythological  —  the  doings  of  the  gods 
travestied  —  and  partly  taken  from  daily  life.  He  was  the 
first,  for  instance,  to  bring  upon  the  stage  typical  characters, 
such  as  the  parasite,  the  boor,  the  drunken  man.  Political 
satire  and  personalities  seem  to  have  been  entirely  absent 
from  his  plays.  The  important  innovation  introduced  by 
Epicharmus  was  that  he  transformed  a  rude  and  unliterary 
comedy,  which  had  consisted  of  a  series  of  disconnected,  or 
at  most  loosely  connected,  burlesque  scenes,  and  whose 
humor  lay  chiefly  in  coarse  jests  and  obscenity,  into  a  com- 
position which  had  at  least  the  essential  elements  t)f  a  literary 
and  artistic  form.     Aristotle  tells  us  that  Epicharmus  in- 


132  GREEK    LITERATURE 

troduced  the  fable  or  myth.  This  does  not  necessarily  mean 
that  there  was  a  formal  complication  and  a  solution,  but  pos- 
sibly only  that  there  was  at  last  a  certain  unity  of  subject, 
a  more  or  less  orderly  progression  from  one  episode  to  another, 
so  that  the  comic  subject  received  varied  illustration  in  suc- 
cessive scenes.  An  important  fact  is  that,  to  all  appearances, 
there  was  no  chorus  in  the  Sicilian  comedy.  The  goblin-like 
fun-makers  of  the  Dorian  farce  or  mime  were  never  organized 
into  a  band  under  the  direction  of  a  leader,  as  the  members 
of  the  Attic  comus  were  welded  together  into  a  chorus,  but 
remained  individuals.  Consequently  the  structure  of  a  play 
of  Epicharmus  was  simple  —  a  series  of  episodes  consisting 
of  narration  and  dialogue,  separated  from  each  other,  per- 
haps, by  dancing  on  the  part  of  the  actors,  but  not  by  cho- 
ral performances.  No  trace  is  preserved  of  the  balanced, 
double  structure  which,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  peculiar  char- 
acteristic of  the  central  or  plot  portion  of  a  play  of  Aris- 
tophanes. The  plot  may  have  been  developed  by  means  of 
a  conflict  of  principles  taking  the  form  of  a  debate ;  indeed 
there  are  traces  of  this  dramatic  device  in  the  remains  of 
Epicharmus ;  but  the  structure  of  such  debates  seems  to  have 
resembled  the  dialogue  debate  of  Attic  tragedy  rather  than 
that  of  Attic  comedy  with  its  delicate  balancing  of  parts. 

From  the  facts  that  have  been  presented  the  inference  is 
obvious  that  the  Attic  comedy  of  the  time  of  Aristophanes 
was  a  composite  structure.  The  choral  element  was  derived 
from  the  Attic  comus  ;  the  balanced  structure  in  monologue, 
dialogue,  and  song  was  due  to  the  interplay  of  the  two  half- 
choruses,  the  two  leaders  of  the  half-choruses,  and  the  leader 
of  the  whole  chorus.  The  unpaired  element,  on  the  other 
hand  —  particularly  the  loosely  connected  episodes  that 
follow  the  parabasis  —  is  of  Dorian  origin.  In  fact,  there  is 
some  reason  to  think  that  the  actor  element,  taken  by  and 
large,  is  Dorian.  Aristotle  tells  us  that  comedy  began  with 
improvisations,  and  originated  with  the  leaders  of  the  phallic 


COMEDY  133 

performances.  He  probably  refers  to  the  comus,  for  though 
its  members  did  not  wear  the  phallus,  yet  this  emblem  was 
carried  in  the  Dionysiac  processions  in  which  the  comus 
participated.  But  the  phallus  was  a  distinctive,  characteris- 
tic feature  of  the  make-up  of  the  Dionysiac  goblins,  whose 
antics  gave  the  impulse  which  led  to  the  comedy  of  the 
Dorians,  and  it  was  equally  a  part  of  the  garb  of  the  actors 
in  the  Attic  comedy,  even  in  that  of  Aristophanes  and  his 
contemporaries. 

It  was  ine\atable  that  the  artistic  genius  of  the  Athenians 
should  eventually  eliminate  from  comedy  the  incongruous 
elements  due  to  its  composite  origin,  and  at  the  same  time 
should  purge  it  of  the  frank  indecency  and  unashamed 
naturalness  which  were  its  inheritance  from  a  less  conven- 
tional civilization.  Only  by  such  a  process  of  purgation  and 
of  submission  to  the  severe  canons  of  art  could  a  form  of 
literature  both  universal  and  of  permanent  value  have  been 
developed  out  of  the  Old  Attic  Comedy. 

For  a  long  time  the  comic  performances  in  Athens  were 
given  at  the  festivals  of  Dionysus  in  an  entirely  unofficial 
manner,  by  performers  who  were  volunteers  and  not  the 
accredited  representatives  of  the  state.  By  the  year  486, 
however,  they  had  assumed  such  importance  in  the  public 
eye  and  had  reached  such  a  stage  of  literary  excellence  that 
they  were  admitted  to  the  programme  of  the  City  Dionysia, 
the  great  spring  festival.  From  now  on  comedy  steadily  in- 
creased in  importance  and  improved  in  technique.  The 
number  of  poets  who  devoted  themselves  to  the  comic  muse 
grew  rapidly.  By  the  admission  of  comedy  into  the  January 
festival,  the  Lenaea,  about  442,  opportunity  was  given  for  the 
exhibition  of  ten  comedies  a  year,  instead  of  only  five,  by 
as  many  competing  poets  —  a  number  that  was  maintained, 
^vith  temporary  interruptions,  throughout  the  fifth,  fourth, 
and  third  centuries.  From  the  end  of  the  age  of  Pericles 
down  to  the  death  of  Alexander  the  Great,  i.e.  from  Aris- 


134  GREEK   LITERATURE 

tophanes  to  Menander,  comedy  did  not  cease  to  grow,  in  re- 
sponse to  changing  social  and  political  conditions  in  Athens 
and  to  the  demands  of  literary  art.  We  distinguish  three 
great  periods:  the  Old  Comedy,  from  the  beginning  down 
to  the  death  of  Aristophanes ;  the  Middle  Comedy,  a  transi- 
tion-period of  about  fifty  years;  and  the  New  Comedy, 
which  reached  its  zenith  in  Menander. 

Attic  comedy  was  not  restricted  to  subjects  drawn  from 
mythology-,  as  was  tragedy.  Any  situation  in  politics  or 
society,  any  tendency  in  literature  or  religion  or  education  or 
ethics,  the  foibles  of  the  people  or  the  idiosyncrasies  of  in- 
dividuals, the  weaknesses  of  the  Olympian  gods  themselves 
—  in  short,  any  subject  which  the  exuberant  fancy  of  the  poets 
could  summon  up  and  turn  to  account  for  purposes  of  bur- 
lesque, parody,  or  satire,  made  an  acceptable  theme  for  the 
laughter-loving  Athenians.  We  have  already  referred  to 
the  mythological  travesty,  cultivated  by  Epicharmus  and 
the  Attic  poets  who  were  most  subject  to  his  influence,  in 
which  the  heroes  of  mythology  and  even  the  gods  were  turned 
to  ridicule.  Sometimes  the  mythological  travesty  was  given 
a  political  import  also,  as  when  Cratinus,  in  a  burlesque  upon 
the  judgment  of  Paris,  put  Pericles  upon  the  stage  under  the 
thin  disguise  of  Dionysus,  ''the  king  of  satyrs,"  and  charged 
the  scenes  in  which  he  appeared  with  bold  innuendo  relative 
to  Pericles's  relations  with  Aspasia  and  with  biting  witticisms 
on  his  public  policies.  A  never-failing  source  of  amusement 
was  furnished  by  parodies  of  the  tragic  poets,  with  whose 
plays  the  comic  poet  could  safely  assume  a  remarkable  degree 
of  familiarity  on  the  part  of  his  audience.  The  extant  plaj^s 
are  sprinkled  with  pathetic  Imes  and  touching  situations 
from  tragedy,  so  distorted  and  put  to  uses  so  obviously  in- 
congruous as  to  be  irresistibly  funny,  even  to  us.  Imitations 
of  animal  life  were  much  in  vogue  in  the  Old  Comedy.  We 
hear  of  choruses  of  snakes,  ants,  nightingales,  goats,  birds, 
wasps,  fishes,  and  frogs.     Again  we  have  choruses  of  villages, 


COMEDY  135 

cities,  laws,  clouds,  seasons,  breezes,  islands,  and  transport- 
ships.  These  fantastic  conceptions  were  often  merely  a  cloak 
for  political  or  social  satire,  as  we  see  in  the  Wasps  and  Clouds 
of  Aristophanes.  Another  favorite  topic  was  derived  from 
folk-tales  —  stories  about  strange  lands  and  peoples ;  or 
we  are  transported  to  some  Utopia,  where  all  good  things 
happen  of  themselves  and  everybody  is  rich  and  happy; 
or  we  are  taken  back  into  a  long-past  golden  age,  to  a  prim- 
itive state  of  innocence  and  happiness ;  or,  as  in  the  Frogs 
of  Aristophanes,  we  accompany  the  hero  on  an  adventurous 
trip  to  Hades  and  witness  there  the  squabbling  of  the  illus- 
trious dead  over  trivial  matters  of  dramatic  composition. 
A  survey  of  the  titles  of  the  lost  comedies  of  the  fifth  century 
reveals  a  great  variety  of  dramatic  subjects,  and  a  mar- 
velous ingenuity  in  finding  for  the  chosen  theme  a  scenic  set- 
ting that  would  lend  itself  to  the  unfolding  of  the  poet's 
fancy  and  at  the  same  time  be  strikingly  original. 

The  characteristic  of  the  Old  Comedy  which  distinguishes 
it  from  that  of  Epicharmus  on  the  one  hand  and  from  the 
New  Comedy  on  the  other  —  the  quality,  in  fact,  which  gives 
it  a  unique  position  in  the  world's  literature  —  is  its  self- 
assumed  censorship  of  the  political  and  social  life  of  the  period,  / 
coupled  with  a  daring  in  The  use  oi  mvective,  a  license  in 
ridiculing  institutions  and  persons,  altogether  unexampled 
on  the  comic  stage.  This  quality  can  be  traced  in  the  earliest 
fragments  of  Cratinus,  apparently  the  first  comic  poet  whose 
plays  were  preserved  to  a  later  period,  and  it  continued  with 
little  abatement  down  to  the  end  of  the  century.  There 
were  plays  which  Avere  political  in  warp  and  woof.  There 
were  plays  in  which  political  satire  and  personal  lampoon- 
ing were  incidental.  But  only  rarely  during  this  period  was 
a  comedy  produced  in  which  the  poet  held  himself  aloof 
entirely  from  contemporary  topics  and  refrained  from  using 
the  scourge  of  invective  against  individuals.  The  line  of 
division  between  this  political  comedy  and  the  Middle  Com- 


136  GREEK  LITERATURE 

edy  which  succeeded  it  was  so  clearly  marked  that  Aristotle, 
writing  at  about  the  time  when  the  Middle  Comedy  was 
passing  into  the  New,  could  classify  the  comic  poets  of  the 
fifth  century  as  "lampooners"  and  could  characterize  them 
as  users  of  coarse  and  indecent  language  and  violent  invective. 
Except  for  the  form  in  which  they  worked,  these  poets  were 
in  spirit  more  akin  to  Archilochus,  who  used  his  iambics  to 
vent  his  spleen  upon  his  personal  enemies,  than  to  Epichar- 
mus. 

Free  speech  was  as  the  breath  of  life  to  the  political  comedy, 
and  the  democratic  institutions  established  by  Pericles  offered 
full  opportunity  for  its  exercise.  During  the  aristocratic 
regime  that  followed  the  Persian  Wars,  comedy  could  hardly 
have  been  intensely  political,  nor  is  it  hkely  that  the  right 
to  speak  its  mind  freely  about  persons  and  policies  was  at 
that  time  conceded  to  it.  But  a  new  spirit  had  come  over 
Athens  by  the  time  that  Pericles  became  the  recognized  leader 
of  the  popular  party.  Athens  was  then  committed  to  the 
policy  of  exploiting  the  empire  in  her  own  interests.  The 
body  of  free  citizens  had  been  enormously  increased  by  the 
indiscriminate  extension  of  the  franchise.  The  eager  rivalry 
of  candidates  for  the  popular  favor  led  to  a  laxer  administra- 
tion of  affairs.  Pericles,  pressed  by  his  rivals,  had  em- 
braced the  dangerous  democratic  principle  of  ''giving  the 
people  their  own."  A  large  and  increasing  number  of  citizens 
fed  at  the  public  crib.  In  such  a  society  men  had  plenty 
of  leisure  for  politics,  and  to  the  masses  politics  must  have 
been  the  subject  of  most  absorbing  interest.  Incidentally, 
politics  was  an  amusement  to  them  as  well  as  an  occupation. 
When  they  gathered  together  in  the  assembly  or  loitered  in 
groups  about  the  market-place  or  the  chambers  of  court, 
doubtless  their  gossip  played  most  often  about  the  political 
events  of  the  day,  and  their  witticisms  were  levelled  at  the 
heads  of  party  leaders  and  public  characters  of  every  sort. 

In  such  an  atmosphere,  charged  with  political  interest,  in 


COMEDY  137 

which  gossip  flourished  and  freedom  of  speech  was  unre- 
strained, it  was  inevitable  that  the  comic  poets,  whose  first 
business  was  to  amuse,  should  have  apprehended  the  temper 
of  the  Athenians  and  have  offered  for  their  amusement  what 
they  desired.  The  poets,  in  fact,  simply  adapted  to  their 
own  use  the  principle  which  Pericles  was  applying  to  poUtics, 
"to  give  the  people  their  own,"  to  serve  up  to  them  the 
subjects  most  likely  to  win  their  applause  —  a  principle  which 
Dr.  Johnson  frankly  accepted  for  the  playwright  in  the  lines 

The  drama's  laws  the  drama's  patrons  give ; 
For  we  that  live  to  please  must  please  to  live.^ 

That  the  people  welcomed  the  political  comedy  with  open 
arms  is  shown,  not  only  by  the  favors  which  they  showered 
upon  Cratinus,  a  shameless  lampooner  and  master  of  in- 
vective, but  also  by  their  doubling  the  number  of  comedies  to 
be  exhibited  each  year.  The  number  was  increased  from 
five  to  ten,  as  we  have  seen,  by  the  admission  of  comedy  into 
the  Lenaean  festival  also.  This  took  place  about  442,  some 
ten  years  after  Cratinus  had  gained  his  first  victory.  From 
this  time  on  the  Athenians  had  their  fill  twice  each  year 
of  the  yellow  journalism  of  the  comic  stage,  of  muck-raking 
and  mud-flinging  unchecked  by  law  and  untempered  by  pub- 
lic opinion.  Once  or  twice,  indeed,  during  the  next  twenty- 
five  years  the  conviction  gained  ground  that  the  license  of 
the  comic  poets  should  be  curtailed,  and  certain  restrictive 
measures,  we  are  told,  were  passed  by  the  people.  But 
whatever  the  scope  and  intent  of  these  measures,  they  proved 
futile.  Only  after  the  Athenians  had  been  saddened  and 
sobered  by  the  losses,  humiliations,  and  hardships  of  a  long 
and  devastating  war,  after  the  heart  had  gone  out  of  them, 
did  they  submit  to  forego  their  annual  orgies  of  scurrility. 
But  during  the  life  of  the  political  comedy  it  was  essentially 
the  rampant  people's  comedy,  its  gossip  the  gossip  of  the 
streets,  its  ridicule  of  policies  and  of  persons  the  reflection  of 


138  GREEK   LITERATURE 

the  jokes  that  circulated  daily  in  the  clubs  and  the  gymnasia 
and  other  gathering-places. 

This  conception  of  the  purpose  and  aim  of  the  Old  Attic 
Comedy  is  not  the  traditional  view,  which  has  come  down 
to  us  from  antiquity,  according  to  which  the  comic  poets  were 
the  scourges  of  vice,  the  austere  censors  of  public  and  private 
morals,  as  Horace  evidently  thought  when  he  wrote :  — 

Cratinus,  Eupolis,  Aristophanes, 
And  others  of  the  early  comic  school, 
When  they  would  brand  a  man  as  vagabond, 
Adulterer,  bravo,  rogue,  or  otherwise 
Notorious,  spoke  their  minds  without  restraint. 

(Hovenden.) 

Nor  yet  is  it  the  opinion  that  has  been  widely  held  in  modern 
times  —  an  opinion  also  inherited  from  the  ancients  — 
that  Aristophanes  and  his  fellows  were  statesmen,  men  of 
keen  discernment  and  unflinching  courage  who  cherished 
exalted  ideals  for  the  state  and  society  and  made  comedy  the 
vehicle  for  their  propaganda.^  We  used  to  hear,  for  example, 
of  the  "policy"  of  Cratinus  as  opposed  to  that  of  Pericles, 
and  of  the  measures  advocated  by  Aristophanes  as  "the 
leader  of  the  conservative  opposition  to  Cleon."  But  shall 
we  not  be  closing  our  eyes  to  the  chief  purpose  of  comedy, 
whose  business  it  is  to  amuse,  and  especially  to  the  position 
of  comedy  at  Athens,  where  plays  were  brought  out  only  in 
competitive  exhibitions,  in  which  the  poets  were  bound  to 

1  See  Professor  John  Williams  White's  Introduction  to  Mr.  James  Loeb's 
version  of  Professor  M.  Croiset's  Aristophanes  and  the  Political  Parties  at 
Athens  for  an  admirable  characterization  of  the  "serious  interpretation  of 
a  form  of  literature  of  which  the  primary  intention  must  always  be  enter- 
tainment and  amusement."  It  should  be  noted,  however,  that  Professor 
White  protests  against  "the  mistaken  disposition,  recently  manifested,  to 
regard  Aristophanes  simply  as  a  jester  and  to  deny  that  he  had  any  other 
purpose  than  to  provoke  laughter"  as  "an  extreme,  though  natural,  re- 
action." The  reader  is  referred  also  to  an  article  by  Wilhelm  Siiss  in  the 
Neue  Jahrbiicher  fiir  das  klassische  Altertum  (1910),  pp.  400  ff.,  on  the 
"Technik  der  Aristophanischen  Komodie." 


COMEDY  139 

win  the  favor  of  the  populace  as  the  condition  of  success, 
if  we  adopt  either  of  these  interpretations  of  the  poHtical 
corned}^  ?  ^  And  may  we  not  credit  the  Athenian  comic 
poets  with  sufficient  discernment  to  have  perceived,  what 
all  satirists  in  both  literature  and  art  must  perceive,  that 
the  subject  of  a  caricature,  to  win  instant  attention,  must 
be  a  person  more  or  less  prominent  in  the  public  eye?  In- 
deed, no  other  form  of  ridicule  or  of  comic  misrepresentation 
can  count  so  surely  upon  achieving  immediate  success  as 
a  clever  caricature  of  an  eminent  person.  A  contemporary 
of  Aristophanes,  the  writer  of  a  shrewd  political  pamphlet  ^ 
on  the  Athenian  democracy,  states  as  a  fact  what  we  might 
have  assumed  as  a  matter  of  inference :  — 

The  people  do  not  permit  the  popular  government  to  be  lam- 
pooned and  vilified,  because  they  do  not  care  to  hear  themselves 
vilified.  But  if  anybody  desires  to  lampoon  an  individual,  they 
give  him  full  leave,  well  knowing  that  the  object  of  comic  ridicule 
does  not,  as  a  general  thing,  belong  to  the  people  or  to  the  masses. 
He  is  rather  a  man  of  wealth  or  of  noble  birth  or  of  great  influence. 
Very  few  persons  who  are  poor  and  of  the  common  classes  are  made 
the  butt  of  comedy,  and  not  even  these  few  unless  they  are  meddle- 
some or  seek  to  have  some  advantage  over  the  populace. 

Lucian  (Piscator  §  25)  expresses  a  similar  judgment :  — 

jMost  people  are  naturally  inclined  to  like  satire  and  ridicule, 
especially  when  the  things  ridiculed  pass  for  noble  and  stately. 
For  example,  they  used  to  be  delighted    with   Aristophanes  and 

'  Since  these  words  were  written  an  interesting  sketch  of  the  "Early  Attic 
Comedy  and  its  Bearings  upon  Political  and  Social  Life  at  Athens"  (Presi- 
dential Address  delivered  before  the  Classical  Association  of  Ireland  on 
Feb.  9, 1911)  has  come  into  my  hands  by  the  courtesy  of  its  author,  Mr.  W.J. 
M.  Starkie.  The  distinguished  editor  of  the  Waaps,  the  Acharnians  and  the 
Clouds  takes  essentially  the  same  view  of  tht;  political  comedy  as  that  pre- 
sented above.  Cf.  "Aristophanes  was  a  comic  poet  whose  function  it  was  to 
excite  laughter,  to  crystallize  the  gossip  that  passed  from  mouth  to  mouth  at 
Athens"  (p.  12)  ;  "It  was  not  the  function  of  the  comic  poet  to  be  just,  but  to 
excite  laughti-r"  (p.  23). 

2  The  Pseudo-Xenophontic  Polity  of  the  Athenians,  §  18. 


140  GREEK  LITERATURE 

Eupolis  when  they  brought  Socrates  on  the  scene  to  make  mock  of 
him.  .  .  .  These  jests  counted  as  a  part  of  the  festival  of  the  god, 
and  very  likely  the  god  enjoyed  them  too,  for  he  is  a  laughter- 
loving  god. 

But  the  best  testimony  is  that  which  the  comic  poets  them- 
selves furnish.  Aristophanes  no  doubt  does  pose  as  a  re- 
former, as  a  censor  of  morals,  as  a  sage  adviser,  and  as  a  bene- 
factor of  the  people.^  It  is  the  pose  habitual  to  the  satirist, 
a  part  of  his  stock  in  trade.  As  for  the  moral  effect  of  the 
ribald  jokes  and  obscene  buffoonery  of  our  Athenian  re- 
former, the  less  said  the  better.  They  are  not  vicious,  it 
is  true,  and  were  perhaps  not  dangerous  to  the  morals  of  the 
average  Athenian  of  the  day,  but  their  tendency  cannot  be 
regarded  as  elevating  or  edifying,  and  the  poet  himself  does 
not  pretend  that  it  was.  The  indecency  which  he  severely 
reproves  in  one  play  he  blithely  practises  in  his  next  comedy. 
He  attacks  the  vicious,  it  is  true,  but  he  assails  also  the 
innocent,  and  with  equal  venom.  And  as  for  praise,  he 
reserves  that,  with  rare  exceptions,  for  the  dead.  In  denounc- 
ing Cleon  and  the  leaders  of  the  popular  party  who  suc- 
ceeded Cleon  we  may  concede  that  the  poet  w^as  actuated  by 
a  serious  patriotic  purpose ;  he  certainly  vilifies  and  vitu- 
perates them  with  a  hearty  good  will.  We  may  even  grant 
that  he  was  a  genuine  conservative  in  politics,  if  it  is  worth 
while  to  classify  him  at  all.  But  we  must  not  forget  that  the 
political  doctrines  of  the  comic  poets  are  likely  to  be  nega- 
tively expressed,  and  dressed  up  with  buffoonery  so  extrav- 
agant and  jokes  so  obviously  prepared  as  always  to  raise 
a  question  as  to  their  seriousness.  This  half-serious,  half- 
jesting  attitude  could  not  be  better  expressed  than  by  the 
words  of  Aristophanes  himself.  In  one  of  his  appeals  {Peace 
764)  for  a  favorable  verdict  upon  his  play  he  defines  the 
whole  duty  of  the  comic  poet  thus :  "  to  have  caused  little 

1  Cf.  Starkie,  I.e.,  p.  7:  "Ostensibly,  the  poets  profess  to  be  apostles  at- 
tempting to  convert." 


COMEDY  141 

vexation  and  given  much  pleasure,"  and  again  {Eccl.  1154) 
he  urges  his  wisdom  and  his  jollity  combined  :  — 

But  first  a  slight  suggestion  to  the  judges : 
Let  the  wise  and  philosophic  choose  me  for  my  wisdom's  sake, 
Those  who  joy  in  mirth  and  laughter  choose  me  for  the  jests  I  make ; 
Then  with  hardly  an  exception  every  vote  I'm  bound  to  win. 

(Rogers.) 

(To  the  ancients  Aristophanes  represented  the  culmination 
of  the  Old  Comedy.  They  saw  in  his  dramas  a  harmonious 
blending  of  all  the  dramatic  and  poetic  qualities  of  his  pred- 
ecessors and  contemporaries.  In  this  judgment  we  who 
are  not  in  a  position  to  make  the  comparison  may  acquiesce. 
His  work  stands  as  the  type  of  the  class  to  which  it  belonged, 
of  a  comedy  which  is  unique  in  the  history  of  literature  be- 
cause it  arose  in  conditions  which  have  never  been  repeated 
and  could  not,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  be  repeated.  And 
besides,  Aristophanes  was  a  genius,  a  creator  of  exceptional 
imaginative  and  poetical  power.  He  rose  above  the  form  in 
which  he  worked  and  made  of  it  a  fit  vehicle  for  his  abound- 
ing fancy,  his  gift  of  caricature,  his  inexhaustible  humor, 
and  his  rare  lyrical  powers.  His  plays  are  essentially  dra- 
matic, full  of  action.  His  plots  are  simple  —  even  rudi- 
mentary if  compared  with  those  of  tragedy  or  the  later  comedy. 
He  seizes  upon  a  single  idea  capable  of  ludicrous  representa- 
tion and  demonstrates  it  before  our  eyes  in  the  persons  of 
his  fellow-citizens.  There  is  httle  use  of  the  delicate  technique 
created  by  the  legitimate  drama,  the  technique  of  compUca- 
tions,  delays,  recognitions,  solutions.  Nor  does  the  poet 
who  travesties  human  affairs  and  human  kind  set  before  him 
as  an  indispensable  means  to  his  art  the  faithful  portrayal  )' 
of  character.  Comic  exaggeration  in  character  painting  is 
common  to  all  comedy  in  dealing  with  certain  types,  but  in  the 
topsyturvy  world  of  Aristophanes,  while  typical  characters, 
like  the  slave,  the  Athenian  woman,  and  the  rustic,  are  hu- 


142  GREEK  LITERATURE 

morously  overdrawn,  yet  the  characters  taken  from  real  life, 
like  Lamachus,  Cleon,  Socrates,  and  Euripides,  are  out- 
rageously distorted,  as  the  spirit  of  burlesque  demands.  As 
a  dramatist  Aristophanes  was  first  of  all  a  fun-maker.  The 
remarkable  thing  is  that  his  genius  as  a  literary  artist  rises 
so  conspicuously  above  the  buffoonery  imposed  upon  him 
by  tradition.  His  verse  and  language  are  irreproachable, 
and  through  them  breathes  a  charm  all  his  own.  Plato 
sums  up  this  quality  in  him  in  his  epigram :  — 

The  Graces  sought  a  heavenly  shrine  which  ne'er 

Should  come  to  naught. 
And  in  thy  soul,  immortal  poet,  found 

The  shrine  they  sought. 

(Rogers.) 

During  the  half-century  following  the  death  of  Aristophanes 
comedy  underwent  a  gradual  change  in  both  form  and  spirit. 
The  Old  Comedy,  as  we  have  seen,  had  cared  little  for  the 
niceties  of  plot-construction,  for  the  blending  of  the  parts 
into  an  artistic  whole.  The  chorus,  inherited  from  the  old 
Attic  comus,  had  indeed  been  skilfully  used  to  enhance  the 
spectacle.  Its  numbers  added  materially  to  the  animation 
of  the  action.  But  its  presence  seriously  interfered  with 
the  dramatic  proprieties,  and  illusion  was  often  thro-^oi  to 
the  winds.  In  the  latest  plays  of  Aristophanes  we  see  the 
beginning  of  a  change  in  structure.  The  parabasis  has  dis- 
appeared, and  the  part  of  the  chorus  has  been  cut  down. 
At  the  end  of  the  period  of  transition,  wi  the  plays  of  the  New 
Comedy,  the  chorus  appears  only  beween  acts,  to  furnish 
entertainment  and  diversion  for  the  spectators  by  dancing 
and  singing  while  the  scene  is  clear  of  actors.  It  is  still  con- 
ceived of  as  a  comus,  however  —  a  band  of  revellers,  ban- 
queters, wedding-guests,  and  the  Hke,  who  come  into  the 
scene  of  action  on  some  pretext  furnished  by  the  occasion. 
\  With  the  disappearance  of  the  chorus  from  the  dialogue  and 
'action,  the  old  balanced  structure  which  was  so  remarkable 


COMEDY  143 

a  feature  of  the  Old  Comedy  also  disappears.  The  structure 
of  the  play  once  more  becomes  episodic,  as  it  was  in  the  con- 
temporary tragedy ^nd  as  it  had  been  in  comedy  at  the  time 
of  Epicharmus.  But  for  the  presence  of  a  chorus  between 
the  acts,  a  play  of  the  New  Comedy  is  very  similar  in  com- 
position to  a  modern  play,  consisting  of  prologue,  exposition, 
and  a  succession  of  acts  divisible  into  scenes,  each  conducing 
to  the  development  and  solution  of  the  plot.  The  place  of 
action,  however,  remained  the  same  throughout  a  play, 
as  in  the  days  when  the  constant  presence  of  the  chorus  made 
difficult  the  shifting  of  the  scene.  The  absence  of  the  chorus 
during  the  dialogue  also  encouraged  the  use  of  the  soliloquy 
or  monologue,  which  plays  an  important  role  in  the  New 
Comed^O, 

We  can  no  longer  trace  in  detail  the  influences  which 
brought  about  these  structural  changes,  which  trans- 
formed a  local  and  transient  burlesque  drama,  peculiar 
to  the  time  and  circumstances,  into  a  comedy  of  man- 
ners, universal  in  form  and  spirit.  The  influence  of 
tragedy,  especially  that  of  Euripides,  has  been  thought 
to  have  been  a  potent,  if  not  a  controlling,  factor.  How- 
ever this  may  be,  the  change  in  spirit  which  came  over 
comedy  is  to  be  ascribed,  in  part  at  least,  to  the 
^changed  political,  social,  and  intellectual  conditions  at 
Athens.  /The  Peloponnesian  War  had  shattered  the  im- 
periahstic'^aspirations  of  the  Athenians,  had  broken  the 
spirit  of  the  extreme  democracy,  had  directed  the  atten- 
tion of  the  people  more  to  their  internal  affairs,  had  tempered 
the  violence  of  party  strife,  and  paved  the  way  for  an  im- 
proved, if  less  confident  and  aggressive,  social  and  pohtical 
life.  A  second  critical  epoch  was  the  overthrow  of  Athenian 
freedom  by  Philip  and  Alexander,  which  brought  in  the 
thoughtful  and  refined  cosmopolitan  society  that  characterized 
the  end  of  the  fourth  century.  These  events  did  not  vio- 
lently interrupt  the  normal  growth  of  comedy,  but  only 


144  GREEK  LITERATURE 

hastened  a  process  that  had  already  made  notable  head- 
way. ) 

Aristotle,  writing  at  about  the  time  when  the  New  Comedy 
was  taking  shape,  remarks  that  the  poet  Crates,  who  was  of 
the  generation  preceding  Aristophanes,  had  initiated  an  im- 
portant change  in  the  spirit  of  the  Old  Comedy,  following 
the  example  of  Epicharmus.  He  had  put  aside  the  lampoon- 
ing of  individuals  and  had  "generalized"  his  plots.  The 
kind  of  mirth  which  the  other  poets  excited  was  essentially 
malicious,  for  it  involved  the  discomfiture  of  another.  A 
higher  form  of  humor  is  that  which  derives  pleasure  from  the 
frailities  and  foibles  of  human  nature  in  general,  and  in  such 
a  way  as  not  to  inflict  pain.  In  another  passage  Aristotle 
draws  attention  to  a  difference  between  the  Old  Comedy  and 
that  of  his  time  in  the  matter  of  refinement  and  good  taste. 
The  coarse  obscenity  habitual  to  the  former  has  given  way 
to  delicate  innuendo.  The  remains  of  the  Middle  and  New 
Comedy  which  have  come  down  to  us  bear  witness  to  the 
justice  of  these  observations.  .  The  element  of  personal  satire 
does  not,  indeed,  die  wholly  out.  The  poets  still  occasionally 
take  a  fling  at  individuals  —  at  the  philosophers,  the  poets, 
the  courtesans,  and  the  man  about  town.  But  the  tone  is 
that  of  light  badinage  rather  than  of  venomous  denunciation. 
r  Furthermore,  the  grotesque  and  indecent  costume  of  the 
comic  actors  of  the  earlier  period  has  also  disappearedi  \^ 
far  as  we  can  judge,  the  men  and  women  of  the  New  Comedy 
are  dressed  as  persons  in  ordinary  life^^  The  mirror  which 
the  poet  holds  up  to  nature  is  no  longer  the  concave  mirror. 

If  the  comic  poets  of  the  new  age  were  constrained  to  quit 
the  field  of  politics  and  personal  satire  in  choosing  their  sub- 
jects, they  found  before  them,  practically  uncultivated  by 
their  predecessors,  the  most  fertile  field  of  all  —  human 
nature  and  society.  A  nearer  approach  to  real  life  is  early 
/detected  in  the  Middle  Comedy  in  the  more  frequent  and 
( extensive  use  of  stock  characters,  such  as  the  loquacious  cook, 


COMEDY  145 

the  blustering  soldier,  and  the  grovelling  parasite.  But  the 
transition  was  gradual.  Before  the  ideal  was  realized  to- 
ward which  the  comic  poets  were  groping  —  the  faith- 
ful representation  of  contemporary  life  and  manners  —  at- 
tempts were  made  in  other  directions.  In  particular,  the 
mythological  travesty  came  into  vogue  once  more.  The 
(Stories  of  the  births,  marriages,  banquets,  and  gallant  ad- 
/ ventures  of  the  gods  were  humorously  depicted,  as  in  the 
'  comedy  of  Epicharmus.  This  kind  of  subject  had  been 
employed  throughout  the  Old  Comedy,  but  generally,  if  not 
always,  as  a  framework  for  political  satire.  It  now  becomes, 
instead  of  the  fantastic  political  allegory,  in  which  Pericles 
and  Aspasia,  for  example,  were  seen  under  transparent  masks, 
more  nearly  an  allegory  of  human  life,  disclosing  the  types 
of  mankind  in  the  figures  of  the  humanized  Olympians. 
Except  for  the  supernatural  element  in  it,  the  Amphitruo, 
which  Plautus  has  taken  from  the  Greek,  resembles  the 
comedy  of  domestic  Hfe:  Mercury,  except  for  his  name,  is 
a  tjT^ical  intriguing  slave.  In  fact,  we  may  suspect  that 
the  mythological  comedy  was  the  bridge  by  which  comedy 
passed  from  the  particular  to  the  universal,  from  the  study 
of  the  ludicrous  and  grotesque  in  the  individual  to  that  of 
the  universal  qualities  which  make  the  life  of  our  fellow- 
men  always  interesting  and  generally  amusing.  Mythology 
furnished  the  situations  and  the  names,  contemporary  society 
the  ethical  traits.  It  was  only  a  short  step  to  that  complete 
universality  at  which,  as  Aristotle  remarks,  poetry  aims, 
and  which,  he  tells  us,  was  achieved  in  comedy  when  the 
"poet  first  constructs  his  plot  on  the  lines  of  probability  and 
then  inserts  characteristic  names."  A  fragment  from  a  play 
of  Antiphanes,  a  poet  of  the  Middle  Comedy,  not  onl}^  illus- 
trates this  statement  of  Aristotle,  but  shows  us  how  much 
importance  the  poets  of  the  transition  were  already  ascril)ing 
to  the  construction  of  the  plot.  The  tragic  poets,  Antiphanes 
complains,  have  an  easy  task.     A  hint,  a  name  like  Oedipus, 


146  GREEK  LITERATURE 

and  the  audience  is  in  possession  of  the  whole  story.     He 
continues :  — 

Then  when  they're  stalled  for  words  and  in  their  plots 

Are  absolutely  stuck,  they  simply  raise 

Their  god-machine,  as  one  his  finger  lifts. 

And  thus  with  the  spectators  square  themselves. 

But  we  have  none  of  this  in  comedy. 

The  plots  entire  our  wits  must  needs  invent, 

New  names  devise,  the  antecedent  tale, 

The  present  circumstances,  denouement, 

The  exposition.     Then,  if  there's  a  slip 

In  Chremes'  or  in  Pheidon's  part,  —  for  all 

That  Peleus  or  a  Teucer  might  commit 

Such  faults  at  will  —  they  hiss  us  from  the  stage  I 

The  poets  of  the  New  Comedy  dispensed  with  mythologi- 
cal subjects,  just  as  the  Middle  Comedy  had  renounced  the 
political.  They  had  discovered  that  human  conduct  and  the 
play  of  human  motives  were  more  real  and  more  entertaining 
than  the  doings  of  the  legendary  figures  of  a  remote  past. 
Furthermore,  the  element  of  the  supernatural  disappears 
almost  entirely.  Sometimes,  it  is  true,  a  god  or  an  abstrac- 
tion, like  "Misapprehension,"  is  introduced  in  the  prologue 
or  in  the  exposition,  but  only  to  explain  the  antecedent  and 
present  circumstances  of  the  characters,  not  to  interfere  with 
their  freedom  of  action. }  In  limiting  their  themes  to  con- 
temporary life  the  poets  concentrate  their  attention  more 
closely  upon  the  faithful  delineation  of  character,  the  study 
of  the  motives  of  conduct,  and  upon  the  construction  of  the 
plot,  with  its  delays  and  surprises.  They  gave  a  "mirror 
of  life,"  speculum  vitae,  and  particularly  of  those  aspects  of 
life  that  reveal  the  familiar  frailties  of  mankind.  The  ob- 
ject of  the  Old  Comedy  was  to  excite  laughter,  even  malicious 
laughter,  by  a  portrayal  of  the  ridiculous ;  therefore  it  dealt 
with  characters  worse  than  the  average,  as  contrasted  with 
tragedy,  which  chose  persons  better  than  the  average.  |  The 


COMEDY  147 

New  Comedy  portrayed  average  characters,  men  like  our- 
selves ;  its  aim  was  mild  amusement  combined  with  edifica- 
tion. The  spectators  should  recognize  their  own  kinship 
wdth  the  men  and  women  represented  on  the  scene,  and  while 
they  might  laugh  at  their  imperfections  and  follies,  they 
should  at  the  same  time  feel  the  touch  of  sympathy.  In 
such  a  comedy  pathos  obviously  has  its  place  as  well  as  humor.\ 
Except  for  the  comic  poet's  humorous  view  of  human  affairs 
and  his  exaggeration  of  individual  traits  in  order  to  heighten 
his  comic  effects,  there  is  not  a  great  difference  between  the 
Greek  comedy  of  manners  at  its  best  and  the  tragedy  of 
Euripides,  whose  realism  tended  to  reduce  his  characters  to 
the  common  level,  and  who  often,  like  the  poet  of  comedy, 
brought  his  plays  to  a  happy  ending. 

Without  attempting  to  describe  the  variety  of  motives 
employed  in  this  comedy,  one  element  must  be  signalized 
because  it,  above  all  the  rest,  establishes  th^^kinship  of  the 
New  Comedy  with  modern  romantic  literature  —  I  mean 
the  passion  of  love.  Almost  every  play  of  this  period  has 
its  love  story,  or  is  a  love  story.     Ovid  says  of  Menander :  — 

fabula  iucundi  nulla  est  sine  amore  Menandri. 

Sometimes  it  is  the  love  of  a  man  for  his  wife,  more  often  de- 
graded love ;  but  very  often  the  disinterested  and  tender 
attachment  of  a  young  man  and  maiden.  And  it  is  this  love, 
put  to  the  test  by  some  external  circumstance  that  interrupts 
the  course  of  love,  such  as  the  objection  of  parents,  a  dif- 
ference in  social  position,  a  misunderstanding,  that  brings 
out  the  true  character  of  the  lovers  and  clothes  them  with 
individual  traits.^  /^ove  scenes,  however,  are  rarely  placed 
before  the  eyes  of  the  spectators.  Frequently  the  girl  has 
not  even  a  speaking  part  in  the  play.  As  a  consequence  our 
interest  is  less  in  the  persons  themselves  than  in  the  working 

«  Cf.  the  observations  of  M.  Croiset  in  the  Revue  des  deux  mondes,  1909, 
pp.  23  fif. 


148  GREEK  LITERATURE 

out  of  their  problem  of  happiness,  more  in  the  surprises  of 
the  plot  than  in  the  purely  personal  fortunes  of  the  lovers^ 
In  this  respect  there  is  a  wide  difference  between  the  New 
Comedy  and  the  modern  romance,  due  in  considerable 
measure  to  the  difference  between  the  Athenian  habit  of 
mind  and  that  of  the  modern  theatre-goer  or  reader.  The 
novel  and  drama  of  to-day  appeal  to  a  public  that  can  hardly 
be  compared  with  the  Athenian  public  of  the  time  of  Menan- 
der  in  respect  of  training  in  accurate  observation,  of  knowl- 
edge of  ethical  traits,  and  of  imagination  habituated  to  the 
portrayal  in  dramatic  form  of  fictitious  stories  based  upon 
human  experience. 

/  The  New  Comedy  reached  its  highest  point  in  Menander, 
wno  brought  out  his  first  play,  at  the  age  of  eighteen  years, 
in  324  B.C.,  the  year  before  the  death  of  Alexander  the  Greatj 
He  died  in  the  year  291.  In  his  career  of  thirty-three  years 
he  exhibited  over  one  hundred  plays.  The  after  world  with 
one  accord  recognized  in  him  the  unapproachable  master  of 
comedy,  the  exquisite  flower  of  Attic  poesy.  The  great  critic, 
Aristophanes  of  Byzantium,  exclaimed,  "0  Menander  and 
Life,  which  of  you  imitated  the  other?"  Until  a  few  years 
ago  modern  criticism  had  to  content  itself  with  the  judgment 
of  antiquity,  for  no  play  of  Menander  had  survived  except 
in  the  adaptations  of  Plautus  and  Terence.  The  numerous 
quotations  from  his  plays  found  in  ancient  writers  preserved 
many  charming  bits  of  moralizing,  gem-like  aphorisms,  and 
observations  on  life  both  humorous  and  grave.  All  this, 
combined  with  the  enthusiastic  admiration  of  antiquity, 
sufficed  to  convince  the  modern  world  that  time  had  robbed 
it  of  a  priceless  heritage,  but  not  to  reveal  to  us  the  quahties 
of  IVIenander's  genius  or  the  basis  of  his  fame.  But  in  the 
past  fifteen  years  the  sands  of  Eg>T3t  have  restored  to  us  con- 
siderable portions  of  this  poet.  We  may  now  form  for  our- 
selves a  fair  idea  of  his  style,  of  the  general  lines  of  his  plots, 
and  of  the  qualities  of  his  dramatic  art. 


COMEDY  149 

This  is  not  the  occasion,  however,  for  the  presentation  of 
An  analysis  and  estimate  of  Menander's  art  in  the  Hght  of 
these  new  discoveries.  The  consensus  of  opinion  to-day  seems 
to  be  that  the  testimony  of  antiquity  regarding  him  is  unim- 
peachable. Has  the  judgment  of  the  best  writers  of  Greece 
and  Rome  in  their  appraisement  of  literary  values  ever  been 
fomul  seriously  at  fault?  Without  dwelling,  then,  upon 
details,  we  may  appropriately  bring  to  a  close  this  survey 
of  the  history  of  Greek  comedy  by  indicating  brieflj''  the 
position  which  Menander  occupies  in  relation  to  his  predeces- 
sors and  in  relation  to  the  later  world. 

IMenander  summed  up  the  experience  in  the  observation 
of  life  and  in  the  practice  of  the  dramatic  art  of  the  two  cen- 
turies which  preceded  him,  and  this  not  simply  because  he 
was  the  last  of  the  marvelous  line  of  great  poets,  but  also  and 
chiefly  because  of  what  he  was.  By  birth  and  education 
an  Athenian  of  the  Athenians,  he  inherited  the  most  refined 
Attic  culture.  He  was  trained  in  the  contemporary  philoso- 
phy and  rhetoric.  One  of  these  had  inculcated  the  close 
observation  of  life,  had  analyzed  the  motives  of  human 
action,  and  had  defined  the  ethical  qualities  by  which  char- 
acters are  distinguished ;  the  other  had  reduced  to  precepts 
the  art  of  representing  appropriately  the  speech  of  every 
variety  of  individual.  Philosophy  had  also  applied  itself 
to  the  principles  of  the  dramatic  art,  considered  both  as  the 
art  of  imitating  men  in  action  in  given  situations,  and  as 
the  art  of  plot-construction.  The  practical  application  of 
all  this  body  of  theory,  with  which  Menander  was  familiar, 
was  found  in  the  law-courts  and  in  the  theatre.  Menander 
knew  well  the  applied  rhetoric  of  the  law  courts.  The 
Attic  orators  from  Lysias  down  supply  an  abundant  com- 
mentary on  the  charactor-spoechcs  in  his  plays.  Indeed, 
Quintilian  (10.  1,  69)  goes  so  far  as  to  say,  for  the  guidance 
of  the  future  orator,  that,  in  his  judgment,  "the  tliligent 
study  of  Menander  alone  suffices  as  a  training  in  all  the  pre- 


150  GREEK  LITERATURE 

cepts  of  oratory,  so  truly  does  he  reproduce  the  complete 
image  of  life,  there  is  in  him  such  fertility  of  invention  and 
easy  grace  of  expression,  and  so  readily  does  he  adapt  himself 
to  all  situations,  characters,  and  moods."  But  especially 
on  the  side  of  the  drama  was  Menander's  competence  the 
result  of  discipline  and  of  experience.  His  practical  teacher 
in  the  playwright's  art  was  his  uncle  Alexis,  one  of  the 
most  distinguished  comic  poets  of  the  Middle  and  New 
Comedy.  But  his  inspiration  he  derived  from  the  kindred 
spirit  of  Euripides,  who  had  sounded  the  depths  of  human  ex- 
perience as  no  other  Greek  poet  had  done.  And  finally 
Menander  saw  life  for  himself,  with  his  own  ej^es.  He  was  a 
man  of  the  world,  not  a  recluse.  As  an  eminent  French 
critic  has  recently  said:^  "It  seems  that  Athens,  at  the 
moment  when  her  historic  destinies  were  drawing  to  a  close, 
had,  as  it  were,  gathered  up  and  concentrated  in  this  charm- 
ing spirit  the  finest  essence  of  her  genius  and  all  that  was 
most  human  in  her  tradition." 

\^But  Menander  was  more  than  the  last  great  poet  of  x4.thens ; 
he  was  the  first  great  poet  of  HellenismJ  It  was  through 
Hellenism  that  Greek  culture  was  destined  to  be  diffused 
throughout  the  Mediterranean  civilization.  Hellenism  had 
a  wider  outlook  and  a  broader  sympathy  than  Athens.  The 
spirit  of  Athens  as  revealed  in  her  earUer  comedy  was  cir- 
cumscribed and  parochial,  while  that  of  Hellenism  was 
essentially  cosmopolitan.  The  Old  Attic  Comedy  could 
not  possibly  be  dissociated  from  the  social  and  political  con- 
ditions in  which  it  arose.  ''The  great  ideas  of  Hellenism," 
on  the  other  hand,  to  quote  the  words  of  Professor  Butcher,^ 
"disengage  themselves  from  the  local  and  accidental  in- 
fluences and  make  their  appeal  to  a  universal  human  senti- 
ment." In  this  sense  Menander's  comedies  were  typically 
Hellenistic.     The  New  Comedy  as  represented  in  him  dis- 

1  Maurice  Croiset,  Revue  des  deux  mondes,  1909,  p.  5. 
*  Aristotle's  Theory  of  Poetry,  p.  373. 


I 

[ 


f 


COMEDY  151 

carded  the  elements  which  had  Umited  the  scope  and  influence 
of  the  earher  Greek  comedy.  By  two  centuries  of  experi- 
mentation there  had  been  wrought  out  an  artistic  structure, 
characterized  by  unity  of  the  whole  combined  with  harmony 
of  the  parts,  that  left  little  room  for  succeeding  ages  to 
improve  upon.  The  appropriate  subject-matter  for  a  uni- 
versal comedy  of  manners  had  been  discovered.  The  faithful 
portrayal  of  life  in  a  spirit  of  broad  sympathy  for  all  that  is 
human,  with  room  for  both  smiles  and  tears,  had  been  estab- 
lished as  the  comic  poet's  ideal.  The  literatures  of  Rome 
and  modern  Europe  bear  witness  to  the  qualities  of  universal- 
itj^  and  permanence  in  the  New  Comedy  of  Athens  and  of 
its  greatest  representative,  Menander. 

Edward  Capps. 


HISTORY 

When  Alexander  the  Great  crossed  into  Asia  on  his  long 
career  of  conquest,  he  took  a  trained  historian  with  him. 
He  was  conscious  of  making  history  of  which  men  after  him 
would  be  glad  to  read.  But  many  centuries  of  Greek  history 
found  no  recording  historians.  They  would  have  been  in- 
teresting to  us,  who  are  so  absorbed  in  origins  and  develop- 
ments, in  causaHty  and  evolution,  in  ''historical  relativity," 
that  Ave  begrudge  ol^livion  any  data  whatsoever.  But  they 
were  not  interesting  enough  to  contemporary  Greeks  to  find 
chroniclers.  Speaking  broadly,  it  always  required  some 
great  spectacular  struggle  —  the  Trojan  War,  the  Persian 
Wars,  the  Peloponnesian  War,  the  duel  between  Sparta  and 
Thebes,  the  Hellenic  conquest  of  Asia  —  to  elicit,  as  it  were, 
a  great  historian;  and  Homer,  Herodotus,  Thucydides, 
Xenophon,  and  Cleitarchus  are  the  canonical  names  corre- 
sponding to  these  spectacular  struggles.  There  are  others,  of 
course,  but  these  tower  above  all,  and  the  others  are  usually 
little  more  than  names  to  us.  Polybius  also  was  moved 
to  compose  his  great  work  by  the  transcendent  struggle 
tween  Rome  and  Carthage ;  but  Polybius,  though  writing 
in  Greek,  had  become,  by  long  residence  in  Rome,  and  in- 
timate association  with  leading  Romans,  more  than  half 
Roman  in  spirit.  Not  forgetting  the  sensational  Duris  of 
Samos,  nor  the  learned  antiquarian  Timaeus  of  Taurome- 
nium,  we  may  say  that  distinctively  Greek  historiography 
ends  with  the  historians  of  Alexander's  career.  And  it  ends, 
as  it  begins,  with  a  triumph  of  fancy  and  invention  over  fact 
and  re-presentation.     In  the  middle  ground,  in  Thucydides 

152 


HISTORY  153 

and  Xenophon,  the  desire  to  inform  is  duly  enthroned  beside 
the  desire  to  please ;  but  the  Greek  hearer  or  reader  usually 
preferred  a  flight  of  the  imagination  to  a  statement  of  the 
truth,  and  the  sovereign  names  among  the  Greeks  them- 
selves were  Homer,  Herodotus,  Ephorus,  and  Cleitarchus, 
names  representing  a  body  of  highly  imaginative  and  mainly 
fictitious  poetry,  and  a  body  of  highly  imaginative  and  largely 
fictitious  prose. 

Well  on  into  that  greatest  century  of  Greek  life  and  thought 
which  began  five  hundred  years  before  Christ,  the  Homeric 
poems,  and  especially  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  were  regarded 
by  most  Greeks  as  authentic  history.  Achilles,  Agamemnon, 
Andromache,  Odysseus,  Laertes,  and  Penelope  had  actually 
and  in  very  person  fought,  ruled,  suffered,  wandered,  grieved, 
and  been  steadfast  to  the  end,  even  as  they  are  there  de- 
scribed. Thersites  had  railed  at  the  Atreidae,  Diomedes 
had  wounded  Aphrodite,  Hector  had  slain  Patroclus,  Achil- 
les had  slain  Hector,  and  aged  Priam  had  ransomed  the 
dead  body  of  his  son,  even  as  we  now  read  in  the  Iliad. 
Ihos,  the  proud  city  of  the  Troad,  commanding  the  Helles- 
pont and  the  Euxine  Sea,  had  been  captured  and  sacked  by 
the  leagued  hosts  of  the  Lord  of  Mycenae,  a  city  which 
dominated  Peloponnesus,  and  the  hosts  had  met  with 
various  dooms  on  their  various  ways  home.  All  this 
had  long  been  history  to  the  Greeks,  just  as  the  book  of 
Genesis  has  long  been  history  to  Christian  peoples.  Skep- 
ticism, doubt,  and  denial  met  with  the  same  scornful  re- 
proaches in  the  first  case  which  they  have  evoked  in  the  second. 
We  now  know  —  at  least  Professor  Murray,  and  those  who 
think  approximately  as  he  does,  know  —  that  the  Iliad  and 
Odyssey  are  traditional  race-poems,^  slowly  evolved  through 
the  centuries  which  saw  tribes  of  hardy  Northerners  sweep 
gradually  down  into  the  Aegean  basin  and  appropriate  by 
conquest  and  assimilation  the  rich  culture  existing  there. 

»  Gilbert  Murray,  The  Rise  of  the  Greek  Epic,  2d  ed., Oxford,  1911. 


154  GREEK  LITERATURE 

The  ruins  which  amaze  the  discoverer  at  Troy,  Cnossus, 
Mycenae,  and  Orchomenus  speak  impressively  of  the  power 
and  splendor  of  that  submerged  culture. 

The  invaders  were  a  song-folk.  They  sang  because  they 
had  to  sing.  They  sang  of  the  achievements  and  adventures 
of  their  gods  and  heroes.  One  generation  of  them  would  be- 
come heroes  and  demigods  to  the  next  generation,  and  that 
generation  to  the  next,  and  each  sang  of  the  prowess  of  the 
past.  A  traditional  poesy  arose,  shot  through  with  "a 
fiery  intensity  of  imagination,"  and  served  by  a  language 
"more  gorgeous  than  Milton's,  yet  as  simple  and  direct  as 
that  of  Burns."  Into  the  crucible  of  this  traditional  poesy 
were  poured  for  centuries  the  migrations  and  conquests  of 
tribes ;  the  oversea  expeditions  of  thalassocratic  cities ; 
racial  myths  and  legends.  Into  the  crucible  went  also  the 
absolute  fictions  of  a  powerfully  creative  imagination  labor- 
ing at  high  pressure  to  supply  a  keen  demand.  The  centre 
of  poetic  activity  shifted  from  the  European  to  the  Asiatic 
side  of  the  Aegean,  and  from  Aeolians  to  lonians.  Guilds 
of  poets  flourished  in  the  chief  Ionian  cities,  who  slowly 
fashioned  the  molten  material  from  the  great  crucible  of  epic 
poesy  into  the  definite  structures  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey, 
and  then  went  on  to  complete  in  later  compositions  the  epic 
cycle  which  the  elder  epics  logically  and  chronologically 
demanded.  If  material  was  lacking,  the  gap  was  filled  by 
fresh  creation  until  the  cycle  was  complete,  and  then  the  epic 
impulse  slowly  died.  These  later  epics,  ascribed  to  indi- 
vidual and  historical  poets,  have  perished.  But  the  central 
poems  around  which  they  had  been  made  to  cluster  assumed 
canonical  form  for  use  in  national  religious  festivals,  and 
finally  passed,  with  all  the  other  rich  fruits  of  Ionian  culture, 
across  the  sea  again,  flying  before  the  conquering  power  of 
Persia,  to  Ionian  Athens.  There  they  found  the  patronage 
of  a  rich  tyrant's  brilliant  court,  and  there  they  were  learnedly 
and  skilfully  edited  into  substantially  the  shape  in  which  they 


HISTORY  155 

have  come  dowii  to  us.  At  national  religious  festivals  they 
were  recognized  as  national  religious  poems,  and  as  national 
history.  The  mythical,  legendary,  and  purely  fictitious 
accretions  in  them  were  seldom  distinguished  from  the  genu- 
inely historical  nuclei.  They  were  thought  to  be  the  work 
of  one  man,  a  divine  Homer.  And  yet  they  actually  ''rep- 
resent not  the  independent  invention  of  one  man,  but  the 
ever  mo\ang  tradition  of  many  generations  of  men.  They 
are  wholes  built  up  out  of  a  great  mass  of  legendary  poetry, 
re-treated  and  re-created  by  successive  poets  in  successive 
ages,  the  histories  knitted  together  and  made  more  interest- 
ing to  an  audience  by  the  instinctive  processes  of  fiction."  "• 

WTien  'Omer  smote  'is  bloomiii'  Ij're, 
He'd  'eard  men  sing  by  land  and  sea ; 
An'  what  he  thought  'e  might  require, 
'E  went  and  took  —  the  same  as  me  ! 

Multiply  Kipling's  blithe  "  'Omer  "  many  times,  and  dis- 
tribute him  through  five  or  six  centuries,  and  you  have  the 
Homer  of  Professor  Murray,  my  Homer,  your  Homer  — 
perhaps. 

But  besides  the  Homeric  poems,  Ionia  also  produced  a 
scientific  spirit,  which  looked  out  on  life  observantly,  and 
drew  inferences  from  it  which  were  fatal  to  a  belief  in  the 
truth  of  those  poems.  It  is  characteristic  of  this  period  of 
scientific  inquiry,  as  Professor  Bury  has  remarked,^  that 
sages  take  the  place  of  heroes  in  popular  fancy,  or,  at  least, 
take  a  place  beside  them,  and  we  have  the  myths  of  the  Seven 
Wise  Men.  Great  historical  personages  also  loom  up  from 
the  near  past,  like  Polycrates,  Periander,  and  Croesus,  about 
whom  fiction  weaves  its  fascinating  web.  The  advance  of  the 
Persian  power  from  the  Orient  to  the  Aegean,  and  its  spec- 
tacular conquests  of  the  Lydian  dynasty  first  and  then  of  the 

'  Murray,  op.  cit.,  p.  154.      (2d  ed.,  p.  189.) 

*  J.  B.  Bury,  The  Ancient  Greek  Historians,  New  York,  1909. 


156  GREEK  LITERATURE 

Asiatic  Greeks,  made  near  and  current  events  even  more 
attractive  to  the  Greek  fancy  than  what  were  supposed  to 
be  the  real  events  of  the  Homeric  poems,  or  what  the  new 
scientific  spirit  denounced  as  the  falsehoods  of  those  poems. 
Truth,  for  a  season  at  least,  became  stranger  and  more 
fascinating  than  fiction.  The  geography  and  peoples  of  the 
Orient  were  brought  home  to  the  Greek  fancy  by  Hecataeus ; 
the  story  of  that  all-conquering  folk,  the  Persians,  by  Xanthus 
the  Lydian  and  Dionysius  of  Miletus.  That  story  soon  in- 
cluded the  invasions  of  Europe  by  Darius  and  Xerxes,  and 
the  splendor  of  the  story,  even  without  the  exaggerations 
which  the  lively  Greek  fancy  was  sure  to  give  it,  made  the 
undertakings  and  achievements  of  the  heroic  age  far  less  im- 
pressive than  they  had  been.  In  time,  Thucydides  could 
allude  to  them  with  something  of  scorn.  To  put  it  briefly, 
the  new  critical  spirit  brought  the  truth  of  the  Greeks'  An- 
cient History,  as  it  was  presented  in  the  Homeric  poems,  into 
doubt  and  disbelief,  and  the  Modern  History  of  the  Greeks 
became  so  fascinating  that  it  absorbed  the  active  imagination 
of  the  race. 

But  the  Ancient  History  of  the  Greeks  never  emancipated 
itself  wholly  from  the  influence  of  the  epic  poems.  The  re- 
volt against  it  which  we  see  in  the  chronological  and  didactic 
poems  of  Hesiod,  poems  which  were  to  tell  men  the  truth  in 
contrast  to  the  falsehoods  of  Homer,  is  still  expressed  in  the 
same  hexameter  verse.  And  even  the  later  mythographers, 
or  logographers,  such  as  Acusilaus,  who  retold  the  epic  legends 
in  prose,  merely  lifted  the  myths  to  a  slightly  higher  level  of 
credibility  by  naive  rationalistic  processes.  The  myths  were 
not  rejected,  nor  even  approximately  reduced  to  their  his- 
torical meanings.  The  earliest  rulers  among  men  were  still 
directly  descended  from  gods,  and  a  clumsy  chronology  by 
successive  generations  was  made  to  show  the  connection  of 
the  great  families  of  the  present  with  these  early  demigods. 
Even  Hellanicus,  who  established  the  first  annual  system  of 


HISTORY  157 

chronology'  for  current  events,  and  tabulated  those  of  so 
late  a  period  as  the  close  of  the  Peloponnesian  War,  incor- 
porated into  his  Attic  History,  to  which  Thucydides  alludes, 
this  clumsy  fabric  of  Ancient  History.  It  is  Thucydides  Avho 
first  cuts  adrift  from  it.  And  this  gives  us  the  succession  of 
writers  who  sought  by  what  they  wrote  to  inform  rather  than 
to  please ;  to  tell  the  truth,  to  tell  of  what  really  was,  rather 
than  of  what  never  was :  Hesiod,  Acusilaus,  Hellanicus, 
Thucydides,  all  devoted  to  fact  more  than  to  form.  Each 
in  turn,  it  is  true,  accuses  his  predecessor  of  falsehood,  Hesiod 
Homer,  Acusilaus  Hesiod,  and  so  on  down  the  line.  This  is 
one  of  the  curious  amenities  of  Greek  historiography.^  But 
each  is  honestly  in  quest  of  the  truth  rather  than  of  a  pleas- 
ing form  of  the  truth  at  the  expense,  it  may  be,  of  the  truth. 
And  Hellanicus  attains  his  quest  with  a  tabulation  of  the 
chief  events  in  contemporary  Greek  history,  first  as  they 
are  related  to  the  j^ears  of  the  priestesses  of  Hera  in  the  temple 
at  Argos,  and  then,  after  these  sacred  records  had  perished 
in  the  destruction  of  the  temple  by  fire,  as  they  are  related 
to  the  annual  archons  of  Athens,  now  an  imperial  Greek  city.^ 
His  work  was  an  "annals,"  in  the  strictest  sense,  and  could 
have  had  no  particular  unity  —  no  plan,  culmination,  or 
conclusion.  It  afforded  not  only  no  room  for  play  of  fancy, 
but  none  either  for  any  artistic  impulses.  It  was  a  catalogue 
of  events  by  years  of  Athenian  archons. 

But  meanwhile  the  really  colossal  events  and  personages 
of  the  Persian  Wars,  after  being  more  or  less  fullj^  recorded 
from  the  standpoint  of  Asiatic  Greeks  by  Charon  of  Lamp- 
sacus,  Xanthus  the  Lydian,  Dionysius,  and  Hecataeus  of  INIile- 
tus,  had  also  been  committed  to  the  processes  of  oral  tradi- 
tion, among  a  people  of  the  liveliest  fancy,  from  whom  had 
come,  by  slow  evolution,  two  of  the  greatest  imaginative 
poems  which  the  world  has  known.     The  wonders  of  Egypt 

^American  Journal  of  Philology,  XVIII  (1897),  pp.  255-274. 
«  American  Journal  of  Philology,  XXII  (1901;,  pp.  39-43. 


158  GREEK   LITERATURE 

and  Assyria,  the  marvels  of  India  and  Arabia,  the  mysteries 
of  Upper  Asia  and  Scythia,  had  been  brought  by  travellers 
and  merchants  within  the  reach  and  play  of  the  lively  Hellenic 
fancy.  Wonderful  facts  and  wondering  fancy  had  ministered 
to  each  other  for  more  than  half  a  century,  during  which  time 
a  great  Athenian  empire  had  arisen,  and  the  Age  of  Pericles 
had  begun.  Books  were  rare,  but  tales  were  rife,  and  there 
were  professional  tellers  of  prose  tales  as  well  as  professional 
reciters  of  epic  song.  Written  and  oral  material  of  tradition 
together  made  a  thesaurus  of  fact  and  fancy  before  whose 
glowing  charm  even  the  epic  cycle  paled,  and  these  bewilder- 
ing treasures  were  reduced  to  splendid  literary  form  by  him 
who  is  called  the  "Father  of  History,"  Herodotus. 

Though  born  in  Dorian  Halicarnassus,  and  long  resident 
in  Ionian  Samos  and  the  Pan-Hellenic  Thurii  of  Magna 
Graecia ;  though  a  traveller  in  all  the  parts  of  Asia,  Africa, 
and  Europe  where  Hellenes  came  into  touch  with  Barbarians, 
Athens  was  his  spiritual  home,  the  Athens  of  Pericles.  Here 
his  immortal  work,  the  materials  for  which  had  been  slowly 
accumulating  during  more  than  thirty  years  of  the  most 
kaleidoscopic  experience,  was  given  at  last  the  form  in  which 
it  has  come  down  to  us.  It  was  edited  and  published,  as 
we  should  say,  during  the  first  decade  of  the  Peloponnesian 
War,  in  Athens,  probably,  and  for  Athenians  —  at  least  in 
fullest  sympathy  with  the  imperial  ambitions  of  Athens. 
It  gives  high  artistic  form  to  the  reigning  beliefs  of  the  Peri- 
clean  party  at  Athens  concerning  the  Persian  Wars,  two 
generations  of  men  after  the  wars  were  fought,  and  one 
generation  after  the  greatest  hero  of  those  wars,  Themistocles, 
had  died.  Meanwhile  the  oral  tradition  of  those  wars  — 
and  the  literary  tradition  was  annaUstic  and  meagre  —  had 
suffered  the  changes  to  which  all  oral  tradition  is  naturally 
liable,  and,  besides,  had  been  directly  influenced  by  an 
entirely  new  set  of  loves  and  hates  and  jealousies  arising  from 
the  growth  of  the  Athenian  empire  and  the  outbreak  of  the 


HISTORY  159 

Peloponnesian  War.  These  tended  to  distort  and  pervert 
the  stories  of  services  to  the  national  cause  rendered  by 
states  now  in  hostile  relations  with  Athens,  and  to  glorify 
the  services  of  Athens.  So  far  as  Herodotus  writes  history, 
he  writes  it  as  a  defender  of  Athens  and  the  Periclean  policies 
which  had  led  to  the  Peloponnesian  War.  He  belittles  the 
Ionian  Greeks  of  Asia  and  their  heroic  but  ineffectual  struggle 
for  freedom ;  he  treats  Sparta  with  ironical  depreciation ; 
Corinth,  Aegina,  and  Thebes  with  contemptuous  hate ; 
Argos  and  Macedonia,  with  whom  Athens  hopes  yet  to  come 
into  alliance,  with  tender  respect.  He  does  this,  as  Professor 
Bury  says  (op.  cit.,  p.  65),  as  "a  historian  who  cannot  help 
being  partial,"  rather  than  as  "a  partisan  who  becomes  a 
historian  for  the  sake  of  his  cause."  And  he  does  it  at  a  time 
when,  as  Thucydides  sa^'s  (ii,  8,  fin.,  Jowett's  translation), 
"the  feeling  of  mankind  was  strongly  on  the  side  of  the  Lace- 
daemonians, and  the  general  indignation  against  the  Athenians 
was  intense."  We  cannot  take  the  word  of  Herodotus  in 
explanation  of  Sparta's  defense  of  Thermopylae,  or  of  the 
stratagem  of  Themistocles  at  Salamis,  or  of  the  tactics  of 
Pausanias  at  Plataea,  although  what  he  says  enables  us  to 
penetrate  to  the  truth  in  these  matters.  For  he  mirrors  the 
sentiments  of  the  community  in  the  midst  of  which  he  writes. 
And  this  is  his  precise  worth  as  a  historian.  We  know 
through  him  what  Periclean  Athens  liked  to  think  and  feel 
on  these  and  other  points. 

"So  far  as  Herodotus  writes  history,"  was  said  above; 
for  that  is  the  least  of  what  he  does.  He  is  a  collector,  on 
a  vast  scale,  of  historical  material,  and  an  incomparable 
artist  in  reducing  this  heterogeneous  material  to  coherent 
and  attractive  literary  form  in  an  age  when  the  footnote  was 
unknown.  Geographical,  ethnological,  mythological,  genea- 
logical, legendary,  political,  military,  literary,  economic, 
architectural,  and  religious  data,  in  both  genuine  and  fictitious 
sort,  have  been  strung  by  him   in    bewildering   profusion 


160  GREEK  LITERATURE 

along  one  continuous  thread —  the  strife  between  Hellenes 
and  Barbarians  from  earliest  times  down  to  the  capture  of 
Sestos  by  the  Athenians  in  479.  This  greater  theme,  which 
gives  his  work  the  character  of  a  universal  history,  was  prob- 
ably suggested  to  him  by  the  narrower  theme  of  Xerxes' 
invasion  of  Europe ;  after  he  had  treated  this,  he  probably 
elaborated  the  larger  subject.  This  narrower  theme  occupies 
the  third  triad  of  the  nine  books  into  which  his  history  has 
been  conveniently  divided  - —  books  VII,  VIII,  and  IX  — 
and  I  am  willing  to  admit,  with  Mr.  Macan,^  though  I  gIo 
not  think  the  argument  for  it  can  ever  be  made  perfectly 
convincing,  that  these  three  books  were  "the  earliest  portion, 
or  section,  of  the  work  to  attain  relative  completeness  and 
definite  form."  They  certainly  constitute  a  distinct  whole 
by  themselves,  progressively  climactic  in  the  stories  of  Ther- 
mopylae, Salamis,  and  Plataea,  and  they  lend  themselves  to 
subdivision  far  less  than  the  first  six,  or  the  first  two  triads 
of  books.  Mr.  Macan  well  says  that  "no  other  equal  portion 
of  the  work  of  Herodotus  exhibits  so  remarkable  a  coherence, 
continuity,  and  freedom  from  digression,  interruption,  or 
asides  as  this  the  third  and  last  volume,  or  trio,  of  books." 

In  all  the  books,  but  especially  in  the  last  three,  Herodotus 
is  not  a  historian  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term  —  not  as 
Hellanicus  and  Thucydides  are  historians.  He  does  not 
seek  by  investigation  to  sift  the  true  from  the  false  and  tell 
for  all  subsequent  time  what  actually  happened.  He  rather 
seeks  to  cast  the  vast  material  which  he  has  collected  on  the 
narrower  theme  of  Xerxes'  invasion  and  the  larger  theme  of 
the  strifes  between  Hellene  and  Barbarian  into  such  shape 
as  is  prescribed  by  the  canons  of  epic  and  dramatic  poetry, 
the  two  regnant  forms  of  literary  art,  but  to  do  this  in  prose. 
He  is  the  prose  Homer,  and  to  some  extent  the  prose  Aeschy- 
lus, of  the  thesaurus  of  fact  and  fancy  constituted  by  the  oral 
and  written  tradition  of  what  was  to  him  modern  and  recent, 

1  R.  W.  Macan,  Herodotus,  Books  VII-IX,  London,  1908. 


HISTORY  161 

as  contrasted  with  ancient  and  mythical  time.  His  was  the 
genius  first  to  perceive  that  modern  history  in  prose  was 
capable  of  epic  and  dramatic  treatment,  especially  of  epic 
treatment.  Comprehensive  discursiveness  is  the  breath  of 
his  nostrils.  The  tales  which  Hellenes  and  Barbarians  have 
told  with  or  without  pertinency,  the  marvels  they  have  seen, 
the  divine  judgments  they  have  illustrated,  the  wealth  they 
have  amassed,  the  crimes  they  have  committed,  their  in- 
trigues, loves,  hates,  and  sorrows  —  these  and  more  than 
these  are  welcome  to  Herodotus,  and  if  he  does  not  find  them 
in  sufficient  abundance,  then  like  a  true  Homeric  poet  he 
invents  or  adapts  to  suit  himself.  It  is  often  hard  to  distin- 
guish what  he  invents  from  what  he  merely  accepts,  and  it 
often  matters  little,  acceptance  or  invention  being  alike 
heinous  from  the  standpoint  of  the  true  historian.  Creduhty 
alternates  in  his  work  with  reserve,  and  both  are  often  childish. 
He  has  lost  his  faith  in  the  gods  and  heroes  of  Homer,  for  he 
has  travelled  in  Egypt ;  but  he  has  the  most  implicit  con-' 
fidence  in  oracles,  and  often  warps  his  story  to  prove  fulfil- 
ment of  them.  He  borrows  largely  from  a  predecessor  like 
Hecataeus,  and  pays  him  no  thanks  but  ridicule.  Andrew 
Lang's  priest  in  the  City  of  the  Ford  of  the  Ox,  who  called 
Herodotus  in  the  tongue  of  the  Arabians  "The  Father  of 
Liars,"  said  that  he  "was  chiefly  concerned  to  steal  the  lore 
of  those  who  came  before  him,  such  as  Hecataeus,  and  then 
to  escape  notice  as  having  stolen  it."  But  all  this  simply 
emphasizes  anew  the  fact  that  Herodotus  was  the  prose 
Homer  of  the  Persian  Wars.  Like  Homer,  he  charmed  his 
hearers  and  will  always  charm  his  readers.  It  was  this 
charm  which  Thucydides  could  not  forgive  him.  But  Thu- 
cydides  despised  Homer.  Those  who  do  not  despise  Homer, 
but  are  edified  by  the  play  of  fancy  about  fact,  will  agree  with 
what  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus  says  about  Herodotus 
{Epist.  ad  Pomp.,  3,  cited  by  Bury,  p.  42) :  "Herodotus  knew 
that  every  narrative  of  great  length  wearies  the  ear  of  the 


162  GREEK  LITERATURE 

hearer,  if  it  dwell  without  a  break  on  the  same  subject ;  but, 
if  pauses  are  introduced  at  intervals,  it  affects  the  mind 
agreeably.  And  so  he  desired  to  lend  variety  to  his  work 
and  imitated  Homer.  If  we  take  up  his  book,  we  admire  it 
to  the  last  syllable,  and  always  want  more." 

But  it  is  a  literary,  not  a  scientific,  enjoyment  which  He- 
rodotus affords  us.  We  know  that  the  panorama  of  the  peo- 
ples and  tribes  of  three  continents  which  he  unrolls  for  us 
is  colored  by  the  fancy  of  the  Greeks.  Greek  ideas  and  re- 
flections are  transferred  to  an  Oriental  or  Barbarian  setting. 
We  can  hardly  find  in  Herodotus  what  Assyria,  Babylonia, 
Lydia,  Libya,  Scythia,  and  Egypt  really  were  in  the  sixth 
century  b.c,  but  rather  how  they  mirrored  themselves  in  the 
Greek  imagination.  It  is  as  though  we  had  to  reconstruct 
for  ourselves  a  mountain  range  from  its  distorted  reflections 
in  the  bosom  of  a  lake.  In  this  case,  however,  the  distorted 
reflection  has  been  brought  into  natural  perspective  for  us 
'by  one  of  the  greatest  literary  artists  of  the  race.  He  had 
the  genius  to  see,  what  is  so  easy  for  us  now  to  see,  that 
Salamis  and  Plataea  were  points  towards  which  all  previous 
Mediterranean  history  converged,  and  from  which  all  sub- 
sequent Mediterranean  history  must  diverge.  To  have  had 
this  vision  first,  establishes  his  right  to  be  called  "The  Father 
of  History." 

It  was  the  attempt  of  the  Oriental  Persian  Empire  to  con- 
quer the  Aegean  basin  which  engaged  the  Homeric  genius  of 
Herodotus;  ThucycHdes  depicts  the  struggle  of  Athens  to 
maintain  her  empire  of  this  Aegean  basin,  and  he  does  it  as 
a  contemporary  and  participant.  An  imperial  democracy 
was  a  new  thing  in  the  world's  experience,  as  was  also  the 
historical  treatment  of  contemporary  events.  Current 
events  had  been  chronicled  in  time-relations  merely  by 
Hellanicus,  but  Thucydides  was  the  first  to  apply  to  them 
the  laws  of  cause  and  effect,  and,  whatever  his  excellences 
or  defects,  he  was  the  founder  of  historical  science  as  we  now 


HISTORY  163 

understand  it,  the  creator  of  historical  criticism,  the  discoverer 
of  its  laws,  and  the  first  teacher  of  the  art  of  writing  history. 
He  whom  many  hold  to  be  the  greatest  modern  historian  of 
antiquity,  Eduard  Meyer,  calls  him  the  incomparable  and 
unequalled  teacher  of  this  art,  but  there  are  strong  voices 
of  dissent  from  such  high  praise.  Those  who  dissent  often 
fail  to  consider  sufficiently  the  exceedingly  narrow  limits 
which  Thucychdes  imposed  upon  himself;  and  those  who 
agree  with  and  echo  the  praise  are  often  blind  to  the  inade- 
quacies of  Thucydides,  even  within  his  self-imposed  limits. 
Professor  Bury,  in  his  Harvard  Lectures,  seems  to  draw  the 
lines  with  dignity  and  justice. 

"Thucydides,  an  Athenian,"  so  begins  the  work,  "wrote 
the  history  of  the  war  in  which  the  Peloponnesians  and 
Athenians  fought  against  one  another.  He  began  to  write 
when  they  first  took  up  arms,  believing  that  it  would  be  great 
and  memorable  above  any  previous  war.  For  he  argued 
that  both  states  were  then  at  the  full  height  of  their  military 
power,  and  he  saw  the  rest  of  the  Hellenes  either  siding  or 
intending  to  side  with  one  or  the  other  of  them.  No  move- 
ment ever  stirred  Hellas  more  deeply  than  this;  it  was 
shared  by  many  of  the  barbarians,  and  might  be  said  even  to 
affect  the  world  at  large."  He  began  to  write,  that  is,  when 
it  broke  out,  the  history  of  a  great  war,  not  a  history  of  Athens 
or  of  the  Peloponnesian  states;  not  a  history  of  Hellenic 
culture  or  of  Athenian  democracy ;  not  a  description  of  un- 
known countries,  except  as  absolutely  necessary,  or  of  un- 
known peoples  and  customs;  not  personal  descriptions  or 
anecdotes  of  private  life  —  Ion  of  Chios  and  Stesimbrotus 
of  Thasos  could  do  that  —  but  a  war-history.  And  even 
in  writing  a  war-history  his  aim  would  not  be  to  please  and 
entertain,  as  Herodotus  did,  l)ut  to  instruct.  "If  he  who 
desires  to  have  before  his  eyes  a  true  picture  of  the  events 
which  have  happened,  and  of  the  like  events  which  may  be 
expected  to  happen  hereafter  in  the  order  of  human  things, 


164  GREEK  LITERATURE 

shall  pronounce  what  I  have  written  to  be  useful,  then  I  shall 
be  satisfied.  My  history  is  an  everlasting  possession,  not 
a  prize  composition  which  is  heard  and  forgotten." 

Who  is  it  that  speaks  with  this  new  note  of  self-repression 
and  utilitarian  purpose?  A  man  who,  at  the  time  of  which 
he  speaks,  was  about  thirty-five  years  old,  a  citizen  of  Athens, 
who  belonged  by  descent  to  a  princely  family  of  Thrace,  as 
Cimon  had,  and  still  possessed  rich  estates  in  that  country. 
He  was  highly  educated  after  the  manner  of  the  best  Sophists, 
and  doubtless  found  Anaxagoras  an  intellectual  father,  as 
Pericles  did.  He  was  emancipated  from  the  undue  authority 
of  tradition  and  custom,  and  given  to  logical  analysis  and 
criticism.  His  intellectual  processes,  that  is,  were  distinctly 
modern.  That  he  took  active  part  in  public  life  before  the 
year  424  b.c,  may  be  safely  inferred  from  the  fact  that  in 
that  year  he  was  made  one  of  the  ten  Strategi,  whose  office 
was  the  highest  under  the  Empire.  Assigned  to  command 
on  the  coast  of  Thrace,  he  failed  to  prevent  Brasidas  from 
capturing  Amphipolis,  the  northern  jewel  of  the  Empire,  and 
was  in  consequence  banished  on  pain  of  death.  His  pur- 
pose to  write  a  history  of  the  war,  however,  was  not  thwarted 
by  this  misfortune.  Indeed,  it  may  rather  be  inferred  that  he 
had  now  the  leisure,  as  he  had  always  had  the  means  and  the 
disposition,  to  continue  the  history  which  he  had  begun  at 
the  outbreak  of  hostilities  in  431.  "The  same  Thucydides 
of  Athens,"  he  writes  in  V,  26,  "continued  the  history  up  to 
the  destruction  of  the  Athenian  Empire.  For  twenty  years 
I  was  banished  from  my  country  after  I  held  the  command 
at  Amphipolis,  and  associating  with  both  sides,  with  the 
Peloponnesians  quite  as  much  as  with  the  Athenians,  be- 
cause of  my  exile,  I  was  thus  enabled  to  watch  quietly  the 
course  of  events,  and  I  took  great  pains  to  make  out  the  exact 
truth."  It  is  safe  inference  that  this  banished  Athenian  spent 
much  time  on  his  estates  in  Thrace,  and  that  he  travelled 
much,  where  it  was  allowed  him  to  travel,  in  the  prosecution 


HISTORY  165 

of  his  inquiries.  He  returned  to  Athens  in  404,  after  the 
war  was  over,  and  began  to  put  his  material  into  final  form. 
Eight  years,  perhaps,  were  employed  in  this  task,  when  death 
overtook  him,  before  its  completion.  His  work,  unlike  that 
of  Herodotus,  is  therefore  a  fragment.  Seven  of  the  twenty- 
seven  years  during  which  the  Athenian  Empire  was  fighting 
to  maintain  itself  find  no  record  in  what  has  come  down  to 
us  from  Thucydides,  and  the  last  of  the  eight  books  into 
which  the  extant  material  has  been  judiciously  divided  by 
ancient  critics  plainly  lacks  the  author's  final  revision.  But 
three  distinct  manners  are  plainly  to  be  seen  in  what  we  have 
of  the  work  —  a  philosophic  manner,  as  in  the  first  book ; 
an  annalistic  manner,  as  in  books  two,  three,  four,  and  five 
(resumed  again  in  the  incomplete  eighth  book) ;  and  an 
episodic  manner,  as  in  the  story  of  the  campaign  at  Pylos 
and  Sphacteria,  of  the  siege  of  Plataea,  or  the  major  story 
of  the  Sicilian  exjDedition.  All  three  manners  are  alike  char- 
acterized by  a  dramatic  method  which  projects  events  and 
persons  as  it  were  upon  a  stage,  and  leaves  them  to  act  out 
there  the  Fall  of  the  Athenian  Empire.  Apparently,  but 
only  in  appearance,  the  author  pronounces  few  judgments 
on  men  and  events,  leaving  them  for  the  judgment  of  his 
readers.  His  detachment,  in  all  three  manners,  has  certainly 
never  been  surpassed.  An  oligarch  in  political  convictions, 
to  whom  an  extreme  democracy  was  "manifest  folly,"  he 
yet  gives  us  a  sympathetic  and  spirited  picture  of  the  Athenian 
democracy  under  Pericles,  in  which  inherent  weaknesses  are 
not  suffered  to  obscure  pure  and  lofty  ideals.  An  Athenian 
to  the  core,  he  never  behttles  Spartan  nobility  and  greatness, 
but  gives  us  in  his  portrait  of  Brasidas  a  character  hardly 
second  to  that  of  Pericles.  An  admirer  of  the  Athenian 
Empire,  a  participant  in  its  honors,  and  stimulated  to  literary 
activity  by  its  splendor,  as  Herodotus  had  been  by  that  of 
the  Persian  Empire,  he  uncovers  with  relentless  hand  the 
greed  and  cruelty  which  marked  its  growth,  culmination,  and 


166  GREEK  LITERATURE 

decline.  In  historical  philosophy  our  best  modern  historians 
may  well  surpass  him,  especially  as  the  appreciation  of  eco- 
nomic laws  is  a  modern  acquisition.  But  in  episodic  power, 
and,  above  all,  in  personal  detachment  from  the  characters 
and  events  of  his  story,  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  he 
remains  unsurpassed. 

The  philosophic  manner  of  Thucydides  may  be  best  illus- 
trated by  a  brief  outline  of  the  general  introduction  to  his 
narrative  of  the  war  formed  by  his  first  book,  which  was 
clearly  written  after  the  war  was  over,  i.e.  after  404  b.c.  «i 

A  brief  prooe?nium  emphasizes  the  greatness  of  his  theme. 
The  empire  of  the  Hellenic  world  was  at  stake.  The  earlier 
history  of  this  Hellenic  world  is  rapidly  reviewed  in  the  clear 
light  of  reason,  which  uncovers  the  falsity  of  legend  and 
romantic  oral  tradition,  and  a  new  standard  is  set  for  the  treat- 
ment of  ancient  and  recent  history.  Coming  to  the  treat- 
ment of  contemporary  and  current  history  —  a  new  art 
entirely — he  says  :  "Of  the  events  of  the  war  I  have  not  ven- 
tured to  speak  from  any  chance  information,  nor  according 
to  any  notion  of  my  own ;  I  have  described  nothing  but 
what  I  either  saw  myself,  or  learned  from  others  of  whom  I 
made  the  most  particular  inquiry"  (i,  22,  2).  He  catches 
oral  tradition,  therefore,  in  the  making,  and  not,  as  Herodo- 
tus did,  after  a  generation  or  two  of  romantic  expansion  or 
partisan  distortion.  The  war  which  he  is  to  describe  had 
a  deep,  underlying  general  cause  —  the  growth  of  the 
Athenian  Empire  into  formidable  dimensions ;  and  also  im- 
mediate and  special  occasions,  such  as  the  Athenian  alliance 
with  Corcyra  and  the  siege  of  Potidaea.  Both  the  immediate 
occasions  and  the  general  cause  are  treated  at  length,  and 
then  more  briefly  the  various  diplomatic  steps  which  preceded 
the  actual  declaration  of  war  by  Sparta  and  her  Peloponne- 
sian  confederacy.  This  is  a  philosophical  method,  and, 
though  new  in  the  world  then,  it  can  hardly  be  improved 
upon  now.     Various  economic  relations  may  be  brought  into 


HISTORY  167 

prominence  in  setting  forth  the  general  underlying  cause  of 
the  war,  as  Mr.  Cornford  has  lately  so  well  done,^  but,  re- 
membering that  economic  science  is  a  development  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  historical  students  may  well  rest  satisfied 
with  the  elaborate  introduction  of  Thucydides.  Contrast 
the  semi-playful  tone  with  which  Herodotus  introduces  his 
story  of  the  Persian  Wars.  Some  Phoenicians  carried  off 
lo  from  Argos,  and  in  retaliation  some  Greeks  carried  off 
Europa  from  Phoenicia.  "Bearing  these  things  in  mind," 
Alexander  the  son  of  Priam  carried  off  Helen,  and  the  Greeks 
were  fools  enough,  according  to  the  Persian  view,  to  make 
a  fuss  about  it  and  lead  an  army  into  Asia.  Hence  the  emiiity 
of  the  Persians.  It  is  true  that  as  regards  the  initial  outrage 
of  the  series  the  Phoenicians  claim  that  lo  was  no  better  than 
she  should  have  been,  and  followed  them  of  her  own  free  will. 
"Which  of  these  two  accounts  is  true,"  says  Herodotus  (i,  5, 
Rawlinson's  translation),  "I  shall  not  trouble  to  decide. 
I  shall  proceed  at  once  to  point  out  the  person  who  first 
within  my  knowledge  commenced  aggressions  on  the  Greeks, 
after  which  I  shall  go  forward  with  my  history."  The  differ- 
ence between  the  artistic  story-teller  and  the  philosophical 
historian   could   not   be   made   plainer. 

The  annalistic  manner  of  Thucydides  is  often  dry  and 
tedious.  But  it  is  certain  that  even  this  manner  is  an  ad- 
vance upon  its  greatest  exponent  hitherto,  namely  Hellanicus ; 
and  the  fact  that  Thuc3'dides  was  obliged  to  establish  his  own 
system  of  chronology  makes  us  charitable.  It  is  easy  for  us, 
with  our  perfected  calendar,  to  fix  with  precision  the  temporal 
relations  of  events.  It  was  not  easy  for  Thucydides  to  do  so. 
Lists  of  archons,  or  other  official  personages,  were  used  in 
different  cities  of  Hellas  to  mark  the  time  of  past  events, 
and  Hellanicus  had  finally  catalogued  his  events  according 
to  Athenian  archons,  a  good  standard  certainly  throughout 
the  Athenian  Empire.     But,  Thucydides  objects  (v,  20,  2), 

•  F.  M.  Cornford,  Thucydides  M ythistoricus,  London,  1907. 


168  GREEK  LITERATURE 

"whether  an  event  occurred  in  the  beginning,  or  in  the  middle, 
or  whatever  might  be  the  exact  point,  of  a  magistrate's  term 
of  office,  is  left  uncertain  by  such  a  mode  of  reckoning." 
He  therefore  measured  time  by  summers  and  winters,  count- 
ing each  summer  and  winter  as  a  half-year,  and  established 
with  infinite  precision  his  initial  year  and  event.  In  the 
fifteenth  year  of  the  peace  which  was  concluded  after  the 
recovery  of  Euboea,  the  forty-eighth  year  of  Chrysis  the  high- 
priestess  of  Argos,  "Aenesias  being  ephor  at  Sparta,  and  at 
Athens  Pythodorus  having  two  months  of  his  archonship  to 
run,  in  the  sixth  month  after  the  engagement  at  Potidaea, 
and  at  the  beginning  of  spring,  about  the  first  watch  of  the 
night  an  armed  force  of  Thebans  entered  Plataea,"  and  the 
war  was  on.  This  impresses  us  as  a  large  apparatus  for  small 
resultant  precision,  since  we  can  glibly  say  that  at  half-past 
four  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  the  12th  of  April,  1861  a.d., 
the  first  shot  of  our  Civil  War  was  fired.  But  since  Thu- 
cydides  had  devised  a  system  of  chronology  far  superior  to 
anything  in  use  before  him,  it  is  small  wonder  that  he  makes 
much  of  it,  and  so  becomes  wearisome  to  us  moderns,  espe- 
cially if  the  events  which  he  chronicles  seem  to  us,  as  many  of 
them  do,  trivial.  In  relation  to  his  theme,  the  behavior  of 
the  Athenian  Empire  under  stress  and  strain  of  war,  they 
can  rarely  be  called  trivial. 

Of  the  third  manner  of  Thucydides,  which  I  have  called 
the  episodic,  i.e.  the  manner  in  which  he  narrates  the  great 
episodes  of  the  war,  surely  little  need  be  said  here,  when  so 
good  a  judge  of  narrative  as  Macaulay  has  pronounced  his 
story  of  the  Sicilian  Expedition  the  "ne  plus  ultra  of  human 
art."  And  time  would  fail  to  speak  sufficiently  here  of  his 
digressions,  few  in  number,  always  logically  connected  with 
the  main  story,  and  always  peculiarly  telling  from  the  fact 
that  they  seem  a  condescension  on  the  part  of  one  whose  aim 
is  far  higher  than  merely  to  entertain.  In  Herodotus,  the 
entertaining  digression  rises  almost  to  the  dignity  of  a  main 


HISTORY  169 

object;  in  Thucydides,  it  is  a  rare  jewel  in  a  severe  setting. 
And  yet  how  graceful  and  fanciful  and  altogether  charming 
Thucydides  can  be,  in  spite  of  his  scorn  for  the  historical 
charmer,  is  to  be  seen  in  the  digression  which  depicts  the 
career  of  Themistocles  after  his  ostracism  (i,  135-138). 
Threading  his  way  through  the  maze  of  legend  which  had 
accumulated  about  the  figure  of  Themistocles  after  his  de- 
parture from  the  better  known  parts  of  Hellas,  Thucydides 
has  not  the  heart  to  eliminate  from  his  story  certain  most 
romantic  features,  and  shows  us  in  the  scene  at  the  palace 
of  Admetus,  King  of  the  Molossians,  an  ability  to  follow  and 
develop  Homeric  suggestions  fully  equal  to  that  of  Herod- 
otus.     It  is   like  a  smile   upon  a  stern  face  (Ae'wv  iyiXaa-ev 

ivravOa  1) . 

On  the  speeches  also  in  Thucydides  the  whole  time  now 
at  our  disposal  might  profitably  be  spent.^  A  purely  orna- 
mental literary  device  in  Homer  and  Herodotus  has  been 
lifted  by  him  into  a  means  for  securing  that  personal  detach- 
ment from  the  events  and  characters  of  his  story  which  is 
the  despair  of  all  who  come  after  him,  and  an  apparent  ob- 
jectivity of  presentation  which  is  seen  only  in  the  best  drama. 
These  speeches  range  all  the  way  from  the  brief  hortatory 
appeal  of  a  commander  to  his  soldiers  just  before  a  battle, 
through  the  lengthy  addresses  of  embassies  to  parliamentary 
assemblies,  up  to  the  matchless  speech  put  into  the  mouth 
of  Pericles  ostensibly  to  commemorate  the  citizens  of  Athens 
fallen  in  battle  during  an  uneventful  year  of  the  war,  but 
really  to  set  forth  the  historian's  broad  conception  of  the  im- 
perial democracy  of  Athens,  now  fallen,  and  of  the  high 
ideals  of  that  democracy's  first  ruler  and  guide.  "I  have 
put  into  the  mouth  of  each  speaker,"  says  Thucydides  (i, 
22,  1),  "the  sentiments  proper  to  the  occasion,  expressed  as 

'  Scholiast  on  i,  126,  3. 

2  R.  C.  Jebb,  "The  Speeches  of  Thucydides,"  in  Abbott's  Hellenica, 
Oxford,  1880. 


170  GREEK  LITERATURE 

I  thought  he  would  be  Hkely  to  express  them,  while  at  the 
same  time  I  endeavored,  as  nearly  as  I  could,  to  give  the 
general  purport  of  what  was  actually  said."  As  to  Professor 
Bury's  interesting  suggestion  that  the  speeches  composed 
in  his  more  obscure  manner  contain  more  of  what  Thucydides 
thought  was  "proper  to  the  occasion,"  and  those  com- 
posed in  his  simpler  manner  more  of  "what  was  actually 
said,"  we  may  be  somewhat  skeptical.  And  summing  the 
matter  up,  we  may  say  that  in  Thucydides,  as  in  Herodotus, 
for  all  their  deficiencies,  there  are  certain  high  quahties,  and 
more  in  Thucydides  and  higher  than  in  Herodotus,  which 
have  never  been  surpassed  by  writers  of  history.  How 
potent  still  is  the  influence  of  Thucydides  may  be  clearly 
seen  by  those  who  know  him  in  the  pages  of  Mr.  Rhodes's 
great  and  now  standard  history  of  our  Civil  War. 

The  interrupted  task  of  Thucydides  was  completed  by 
Xenophon,  who  tried  to  follow  his  methods  and  continue  his 
spirit,  but  succeeded  with  only  a  faint  success.  The  modern 
historian  has  nothing  to  learn  from  Xenophon  that  his  master 
does  not  better  teach,  except,  perhaps,  in  the  matter  of 
biography.  The  words  of  Grote  are  familiar  :  "It  is  at  this 
point  that  we  have  to  part  company  with  the  historian  Thu- 
cydides. .  .  .  The  full  extent  of  this  irreparable  loss  can 
hardly  be  conceived.  ...  To  pass  from  Thucydides  to  the 
Hellenica  of  Xenophon,  is  a  descent  truly  mournful ;  and 
yet,  when  we  look  at  Grecian  history  as  a  whole,  we  have 
great  reason  to  rejoice  that  even  so  inferior  a  work  as  the 
latter  has  reached  us."  In  Xenophon's  completion  of  the 
history  of  the  Peloponnesian  War  we  welcome  the  method 
and  manner  of  Thucydides,  but  we  miss  his  discerning  power, 
and,  above  all,  his  detachment.  For  Xenophon  had  only 
a  mediocre  talent,  and  besides  was  a  partisan;  a  partisan, 
too,  not  of  Athens,  his  native  city,  but  of  Sparta.  And  in 
his  continuation  of  Greek  history  down  to  362,  we  can  never 
forgive  him  the  distortion  of  view  which  elevates  so  unduly 


HISTORY  171 

the  personality  of  Agesilaus  of  Sparta,  and  depreciates  so 
unduly,  almost  to  the  point  of  utter  neglect,  that  of  the 
Theban  Epaminondas,  whom  Cicero  called  "princeps  Grae- 
corum."  It  is  not  too  harsh  a  judgment  to  call  Xenophon 
in  history,  as  in  philosophy,  an  agreeable  dilettante. 

Of  his  contemporary,  Cratippus,  whom  Plutarch  clearly 
regards  as  the  leading  historian  of  Greece  for  the  period  follow- 
ing the  point  at  which  Thucydides'swork  breaks  off,  we  know 
too  little  to  pass  any  broad  judgment  upon  him,  even  allowing, 
with  some  English  scholars,  that  a  considerable  historical 
fragment  discovered  at  Oxyrhynchus  in  Egypt  by  the  Messrs. 
Grenfell  and  Hunt  should  be  attributed  to  him  and  not  to 
Theopompus.  And  what  little  we  can  learn  about  Philistus 
of  Syracuse,  the  historian  of  Sicily  and  the  two  tyrants 
Dionysius,  leads  us  to  think  that  Cicero  was  apt  in  styling 
him  a  miniature  Thucydides. 

But  now,  with  the  disappearance  of  Epaminondas  from 
the  scene  of  his  triumphs,  with  the  rise  of  the  Macedonian 
power  to  political  supremacy  in  Greece,  and  with  the  remark- 
able intellectual  domination  of  all  Hellas  by  the  orator 
Isocrates,  a  new  political  idea  and  a  new  literary  form  be- 
came current,  and  forced  into  new  lines  the  art  of  writing 
history.  The  new  political  idea  was  that  of  the  unity  of 
the  Greeks  against  Persia,  and  the  new  literary  form  was 
rhetorical  prose.  Historical  writing  became  more  widely 
national,  and  rhetorical  devices  ministered  to  the  pleasure 
of  hearers  and  readers  as  epic  poetry  or  epic  prose  narrative 
had  once  done.  When,  therefore,  Ephorus  of  Cyme  wrote 
his  Hellenica,  or  History  of  Greece,  though  he  had  a  large 
national  theme,  corresponding  well  to  the  imperial  theme  of 
Thucydides,  he  did  not  continue  the  line  of  historical  writers 
who,  like  Hellanicus  and  Thucydides,  were  devoted  to  fact 
more  than  to  form,  and  wrote  to  instruct  rather  than  to  please 
—  as  Hesiod  the  poet  had  done,  in  protest  against  Homer  — • 
but  rather  the  line  which  culminated  in  Herodotus,   and 


172  GREEK  LITERATURE 

affected  the  Homeric  manner  and  charm.  The  manner  and 
the  charm  of  Ephorus  were  new,  but  they  were  his  main 
objects  in  writing.  "The  form  was  of  more  importance  than 
the  substance,  and  freely  shaped  the  substance  to  its  needs." 
And,  in  true  Homeric  fashion,  he  did  not  hesitate  to  cater  to 
the  reigning  taste  by  the  embellishment  or  even  the  inven- 
tion of  detail.  He  sacrificed  truth  to  rhetorical  effect.  And 
yet  he  achieved  an  immense  popularity,  and  established  what 
has  been  called  "the  Vulgate  of  Greek  history."  One  might 
be  tempted  to  call  his  contemporary  and  rival,  Theopompus 
of  Chios,  the  Thucydides  of  this  rhetorical  period,  as  Ephorus 
was  its  Herodotus ;  but  in  Theopompus  also,  in  spite  of  his 
erudition  and  industrious  quest  of  the  truth,  especially  in 
his  huge  chronicle  of  contemporary  history,  the  Philippica, 
the  rhetorical  element  triumphs  over  the  didactic,  and  besides, 
a  certain  bigotry  and  bitterness  of  partisanship,  together  with 
a  pessimistic  skepticism  and  an  undiscriminating  censorious- 
ness,  combine  to  make  him  rather  a  soured  and  crabbed 
Herodotus,  if  that  is  conceivable,  than  a  later  Thucydi- 
des. From  a  historiography  which  is  the  slave  of  formal 
rhetoric,  the  modern  historian  has  nothing  to  learn  except 
how  not  to  write  history,  and  his  regret  that  Ephorus  and 
Theopompus  are  known  principally  in  the  citations  of  later 
compilers  is  tempered  by  the  remembrance  of  the  kind 
fortune  which  has  brought  Herodotus,  Thucydides,  and 
Xenophon  down  to  him  in  their  entirety. 

But  while  Ephorus  and  Theopompus  were  yet  writing,  a  new 
personage  had  entered  the  ancient  world,  who,  in  an  amaz- 
ingly short  time,  completely  transformed  it.  Alexander, 
the  son  of  Philip  of  Macedon,  in  a  meteoric  career  of  less  than 
twenty  years,  surpassed  in  actual  and  palpable  achievements 
all  that  the  glowing  imaginations  of  poets  and  prose  romancers 
had  devised  for  men  to  admire  and  wonder  at.  Once  more, 
as  in  the  sixth  and  fifth  centuries,  history  became  stranger 
and  more  fascinating  than  romance  had  been,  and  led  the 


HISTORY  173 

way  to  still  bolder  flights  of  fancy  in  a  new  romance.  The 
wonders  of  India  and  the  extreme  East  now  eclipsed  what 
had  once  been  wonderful  in  Persia  and  the  nearer  East,  as 
that  had  ecHpsed  the  wonders  of  the  heroic  age,  and  Greek 
fancy  grew  by  what  it  fed  upon.  On  Alexander  himself  the 
marvellous  in  his  career  seems  to  have  produced  some  spell, 
nor  was  it  wholly  from  political  reasons  that  he  came  to  think 
himself,  and  to  wish  others  to  think  him,  a  god.  On  the 
smaller  spirits  in  his  retinue  the  marvellous  in  their  experience 
produced  the  effect  of  an  apparent  incapacity  to  state  a 
cotomon  fact  as  such.  There  were  sober  heads  among  them, 
it  is  true  —  a  Callisthenes,  an  Aristobulus,  a  Ptolemy,  a 
Nearchus,  and  from  them  we  know  the  truth  about  Alex- 
ander's campaigns,  but  only  because  the  Graeco-Roman 
Arrian,  four  centuries  later,  recurred  to  their  testimonies. 
Their  contemporaries  would  none  of  them,  but  preferred  the 
extravagant  exaggerations  of  Onesicritus,  or  the  wilder 
flights  of  fancy  which  marked  the  current  and  popular  oral 
tradition.  For  Alexander  was  accompanied  from  the  first  by 
a  travelling  literary  court  of  poets,  philosophers,  and  historians, 
and  each  of  the  momentous  steps  in  his  progress  was  cele- 
brated by  athletic  and  literary  festivals  to  which  the  greatest 
artists  of  Greece  were  summoned.  His  frequent  exchange  of 
worn-out  soldiers  for  fresher  and  younger  ones  also  kept  up 
a  constant  line  of  oral  communication  between  his  deeds  and 
the  riotous  fancy  of  the  stay-at-homes.  But  so  rapid  and 
dazzling  were  his  achievements  that  contemporary  imagina- 
tion could  not  keep  pace  with  them.  Especiall}^  after  the 
conqueror  had  vanished  wholly  from  the  view  of  the  Hellenic 
world  during  the  three  years  of  his  Indian  expedition  did  the 
Hellenic  imagination  revel  in  the  historical  and  mythological 
possibilities  of  the  case.  Heracles  and  Dionysus  were  not 
only  imitated,  but  outdone,  by  this  new  god  of  conquest. 
Moreover,  the  mental  energies  of  the  Ionian  Hellenes,  de- 
flected from  political  life  by  the  Macedonian  supremacy, 


174  GREEK  LITERATURE 

found  vent  more  than  ever  in  literary  expression.  Old  forms 
of  expression  were  cultivated  into  decadence,  and  new  forms 
were  devised.  The  literature  of  pure  romance  began. 
There  was,  however,  no  such  recognized  channel,  as  yet,  for 
the  flow  of  pure  fancy  and  invention  in  prose  as  was  afforded 
later  by  professedly  fictitious  narrative  —  the  romance  and 
the  novel.  These  were  yet  to  be  set  apart  as  distinct  forms 
of  literary  art.  Fancy  and  invention  therefore  found  play 
in  the  realm  of  what  should  have  been  historical  narrative. 
And  so  it  came  to  pass  that  before  Alexander  had  been  dead 
thirty  years,  a  mass  of  legend  and  romance  had  grown  up 
around  the  main  authenticated  facts  of  his  career.  This 
mass  has  been  varied  in  its  rhetorical  treatment  rather 
than  sensibly  increased  by  the  romantic  invention  which  has 
ever  since  been  busy  with  that  career,  down  through  the 
middle  ages,  and  into  the  times  of  our  Old  English  literature. 
This  romantic  version  of  Alexander's  career,  with  its  firm 
basis  of  authenticated  facts  and  its  luxuriant  envelope  of 
legend  and  fictitious  anecdote,  vague  with  all  the  vagueness 
of  popular  tradition,  found  its  Herodotus  in  Cleitarchus  of 
Colophon,  a  contemporary,  but  not  a  companion,  of  Alexander. 
He  was  the  son  of  Deinon  of  Colophon,  who  was  an  imagina- 
tive historian  of  eastern  realms,  and  a  pupil  of  Stilpo  of  Meg- 
ara,  a  rhetorician  and  philosopher  celebrated  above  all  for 
grace  and  cleverness  of  literary  style.  His  history  of  Alexan- 
der, highly  rhetorical,  and  full  of  the  wildest  flights  of  fancy, 
became  the  standard,  as  the  history  of  Greece  down  to  Alex- 
ander by  Ephorus  was  standard.  It  forestalled  the  sober 
testimonies  of  the  four  sober  companions  of  Alexander  to 
whom  Arrian,  four  centuries  later,  led  the  world  back,  for, 
at  the  time,  it  met  the  world's  demands.  We  know  Clei- 
tarchus chiefly  through  late  Roman  compilers  like  Diodorus 
Siculus,  Justin,  and  Quintus  Curtius,  but  we  understand 
perfectly  why  the  author  of  the  treatise  "On  the  Sublime" 
calls  him  empty  and  bombastic,  and  why  even  Plutarch  dis- 


HISTORY  175 

credits  him,  "At  this  time,"  says  Plutarch  {Alexander,  xlvi), 
"most  writers  say  that  the  Queen  of  the  Amazons  paid  a  visit 
to  Alexander,  of  whom  are  Cleitarchus  and  Onesicritus. 
But  Ptoleni}^  and  Aristobulus  say  that  this  is  fiction."  Clei- 
tarchus therefore  followed  Onesicritus  in  preference  to  Ptol- 
emy and  Aristobulus,  and  of  Onesicritus,  thanlvs  to  Lucian, 
we  can  form  a  sure  estimate. 

Just  after  the  great  Indian  campaign  against  Porus  and 
his  elephants,  and  while  Alexander  and  his  army  were  de- 
scending the  Hydaspes  in  their  extemporized  flotilla,  a  certain 
historian,  so  Lucian  tells  us  (Quom.  hist,  scrib.,  xii),  bent  on 
flattery,  read  aloud  to  Alexander  what  he  had  written  about 
a  fierce  duel  between  Alexander  in  person  and  the  gigantic 
Porus  mounted  on  an  elephant.  Now  we  have  in  Arrian 
what  is  substantially  Ptolemy's  account  of  the  battle  with 
Porus,  and  there  neither  was  nor  could  have  been  at  any  time 
during  the  battle  a  duel  between  Porus  and  Alexander.  But 
just  as  at  Issus  and  Arbela  romantic  historians  insist,  against 
all  the  facts,  on  bringing  Darius  and  Alexander  into  personal 
combat,  so  in  the  struggle  with  Porus  the  flattering  his- 
torian thought  that  the  two  leaders  must  have  their  Homeric 
duel.  Here  we  can  put  our  finger  on  Alexander-romance 
in  the  very  making.  As  the  historian  read  aloud  to  Alexan- 
der, thinking  to  gratify  the  king  by  inventing  the  most 
fabulous  exploits  for  him,  Alexander  caught  away  the  writ- 
ing from  him  and  hurled  it  into  the  river,  saying,  "I  ought 
to  do  the  same  to  you,  my  man,  for  fighting  such  a  duel  and 
killing  such  elephants  for  me  with  a  single  javehn."  This 
historian,  as  we  learn  from  another  passage  in  the  same  work 
of  Lucian  (chap,  xl),  was  Onesicritus,  the  Munchausen  of 
Alexander's  companions.  And  it  is  in  all  probability  his 
version  of  the  visit  of  the  Amazonian  queen  to  Alexander 
which  Arrian  mentions  as  "reported"  (vii.  13,  3),  only  to 
remark :  "but  this  is  recorded  neither  by  Ptolemy  nor  Aris- 
tobulus, nor  by  any  one  else  capable  of  testimony  in  such 


176  GREEK  LITERATURE 

matters.  And  personally,  I  do  not  believe  that  the  race  of 
Amazons  was  surviving  at  that  time,  nor  before  Alexander's 
time  either,  or  Xenophon  would  have  mentioned  them." 
This  reputed  visit  of  the  queen  of  the  Amazons  to  Alexander 
may  serve  as  a  fair  specimen  of  the  countless  bold  inventions 
which  the  history  of  Cleitarchus  adopted. 

With  Cleitarchus  and  his  history  of  Alexander,  which 
was  for  a  long  time  canonical,  we  may  well  close  this  brief 
survey  of  Greek  historiography.  In  the  century  after 
Alexander,  Duris  of  Samos  was  led  to  write  a  history  of  Greece 
in  which,  judging  from  the  fragments  of  it  which  have  come 
down  to  us,  startling  effects  were  sought  and  gained  by  resort 
to  coarse  and  realistic  sensationahsm,  a  new  manifestation 
of  the  Homeric  and  Herodotean  desire  to  please  rather  than 
to  instruct,  but  not  one  which  became  dominant.  With 
Timaeus  of  Tauromenium  and  with  Polybiusthe  Roman  spirit 
manifests  itself,  and  historiography  ceases  to  be  distinctively 
Hellenic.  "Distinctively  Greek  historiography,"  to  repeat 
from  the  opening  paragraph  of  the  lecture,  "may  be  said 
to  end  with  the  historians  of  Alexander's  career.  And  it 
ends,  as  it  begins,  with  a  triumph  of  fancy  and  invention  over 
fact  and  re-presentation.  In  the  middle  ground,  in  Thucyd- 
ides  and  Xenophon,  the  desire  to  inform  is  duly  enthroned 
beside  the  desire  to  please;  but  the  Greek  hearer  or  reader 
usually  preferred  a  flight  of  the  imagination  to  a  statement  of 
the  truth  ;  and  the  sovereign  names  among  the  Greeks  them- 
selves were  Homer,  Herodotus,  Ephorus,  and  Cleitarchus, 
names  representing  a  body  of  highly  imaginative  and  mainly 
fictitious  poetry,  and  a  body  of  highly  imaginative  and  largely 
fictitious  prose."  And  our  survey  has  itself  made  plain, 
without  further  definition,  the  permanent  value  of  this  body 
of  historical  literature.  It  has  such  value  if  it  does  no  more 
than  illustrate,  by  two  splendid  specimens  in  the  works  of 
Herodotus  and  Thucydides,  artistic  success  in  writing  history 
that  charms,   and  artistic  success  in  writing  history  that 


HISTORY  177 

edifies.  Imagination  a  good  historian  must  always  have, 
creative  imagination  even,  especially  in  the  problems  of 
psychological  reconstruction,  wherein  the  best  modern  his- 
torians make  most  advance  upon  Thucydides ;  and  rhetori- 
cal skill  a  good  historian  must  have,  in  order  to  win  readers 
for  the  truths  which  he  has  laboriously  elicited  from  complex 
testimonies.  But  the  imagination  must  not  become  in- 
ventive purely,  nor  must  the  inventions  of  imagination  or 
the  attractions  of  rhetoric  ever  become  the  main  object  of 
the  historian.  How  easy  to  illustrate  from  the  works  of 
modern  historians  with  which  we  are  all  familiar  !  How 
easy,  also,  to  follow  Professor  Bury  when  he  says,  "Within 
the  limits  of  the  task  he  attempted  Thucydides  was  a  master 
in  the  craft  of  investigating  contemporary  events,  and  it  may 
be  doubted  whether,   within  those  limits,   the  nineteenth 

century  would  have  much  to  teach  him." 

B.  Perrin. 


ORATORY 

With  the  Attic  orators  the  object  in  view  was  always  the 
Demos  on  the  Pnyx  or  in  the  Agora ;  only  gradually  did  they 
come  to  think  of  that  later  and  wider  audience  that  might 
read  the  speeches.  So  the  test  of  a  Greek  speech,  which 
was  meant  to  please  and  persuade  quite  as  much  as  to  con- 
vince, was  always  oral ;  the  appeal  was  to  the  ear.  The 
Athenians  came  to  an  oratorical  contest,  ''to  enjoy  a  critical 
repast,"  as  to  an  exhibition  of  mental  acumen  and  skill  and 
strength.  Their  delight  in  oratory  was  one  of  the  chief 
secrets  of  the  orator's  success.  They  appreciated  not  merely 
telling  hits  made  against  an  adversary ;  their  ears  must  be 
charmed  by  the  chosen  word,  by  euphonious  arrangement. 
Isocrates  speaks  of  "the  antitheses,  the  symmetrical  clauses, 
and  other  figures  which  lend  brilliancy  to  oratorical  displays, 
compelling  the  listeners  to  give  clamorous  applause." 
Gorgias  was  the  legitimate  successor  of  the  Homeric  rhap- 
sodes ;  his  poetical  rhetoric  took  the  place  of  the  rhapsodical 
chants  of  which  the  world  had  grown  tired.  Isocrates  would 
doubtless  have  followed  in  his  footsteps  even  more  closely 
if  he  had  had  voice  and  nerve  ;  but  not  being  able  to  face  the 
crowd  he  tried  to  put  into  the  written  word  all  the  beauty  and 
charm  of  speech.  The  orator  has  always  depended  largely 
on  the  inspiration  caught  from  a  great  mass  of  listening 
people ;  but  no  orators  of  any  other  people  have  succeeded 
in  retaining  in  the  written  records  of  their  speeches  so  much 
of  the  evanescent  fervor  and  charm  and  beauty  which  cap- 
tivated their  audiences.  This  was  due  to  their  innate  feeling 
for  beauty  and  to  their  taking  infinite  pains.     "The  artist 

178 


ORATORY  179 

should  labor/'  said  Nietzsche,  "  over  a  page  of  prose  as  the 
sculptor  over  a  statue."  The  closet-orator  Isocrates  spent 
ten  years  elaborating  his  Panegyricus;  and  something  like 
that  intense  and  patient  labor  characterized  all  the  great 
orators  of  the  Ecclesia.  Pytheas  reproached  Demosthenes 
because  his  speeches  "  smelled  of  the  lamp."  Plutarch  relates 
that  Demosthenes  could  hardly  ever  be  induced  to  speak  off- 
hand, however  often  called  upon  in  public  assemblies.  He 
was  unwilling,  he  said,  to  "put  his  faculty  at  the  mercy  of 
fortune."  Consummate  and  unfailing  beauty  of  language, 
exquisite  finish  and  perfect  polish,  characterize  all  his  speeches. 
That  is  because  of  his  extreme  care  in  composition  —  care 
like  that  of  Plato,  whose  note-book  'contained  the  initial 
eight  words  of  the  Republic  written  in  several  difTerent  orders 
of  arrangement.  "The  best  words  in  the  best  order"  — 
Swift's  definition  of  style  —  was  the  aim  of  Plato  and  Demos- 
thenes, the  aim  of  course  of  all  who  would  be  artists  in  lan- 
guage. "It  is  not  strange,"  says  Dionysius,^  "if  a  man  who 
has  won  more  glory  for  eloquence  than  any  of  those  who 
were  renowned  before  him,  who  is  shaping  works  for  all  the 
future,  who  is  offering  himself  to  the  scrutiny  of  all-testing 
Envy  and  Time,  adopts  no  thought,  no  word  at  random, 
but  takes  much  care  of  both  things,  the  arrangement  of  his 
ideas  and  the  graciousness  of  his  language." 

It  was  not  alone  the  genius  of  the  orator,  nor  his  sense  of 
beauty,  that  caused  him  to  toil  so  hard  for  perfection. 
The  Demos  at  Athens  was,  in  great  part,  the  explanation  of 
his  extraordinary  eloquence.  "Finish  of  workmanship  is 
not  lost  in  any  popular  assembly,"  says  Professor  Butcher;  - 
"  and  the  audience  in  the  case  of  Demosthenes  was  a  na- 
tion of  artists  who  enjoyed  a  political  debate  as  they  did 
a  dramatic  or  musical  festival."  The  audiences  that 
Pericles  and  Pomosthenes  used  to  address,  in  the  fifth 
and    fourth    centuries    b.c,    were   probably   the    cleverest, 

1  lUpl  a-vvd^creus  ivoiJ-diTuv  c.  25.  *  Demosthenes,  p.  1G4. 


180  GREEK  LITERATURE 

quickest-witted  popular  assemblies  the  world  ever  saw. 
The  nearest  parallel  we  can  find  to  the  Athenian  Demos 
is  not  any  modern  populace,  but  a  representative  as- 
sembly like  the  British  Parliament.  "In  Athens  an  in- 
cessant struggle  for  independence,  for  power,  or  for  liberty, 
could  not  fail  to  rouse  the  genius  of  every  citizen  —  to  force 
the  highest  talent  to  the  highest  station  —  to  animate  her 
councils  with  a  holy  zeal,  and  to  afford  to  her  orators  all  that, 
according  to  the  profoundest  writers  of  antiquity,  is  neces- 
sary to  the  sublimest  strains  of  eloquence."  ^ 

]\Iarked  intellectual  activity  and  opermess  of  mind  char- 
acterized the  Attic  Demos,  a  sharp  and  penetrating  under- 
standing, a  delicate  and  refined  taste,  and  an  insatiable  love 
of  the  spoken  word.  Their  training  differed  from  that  of 
any  other  populace.  Everyday  life  at  Athens  was  a  sort  of 
university  course :  the  theatrical  exhibitions  and  the  beau- 
tiful processions  on  festal  days,  the  daily  sessions  of  the  law- 
courts  in  which  Athens  transacted  the  legal  business  of  her 
wide-spread  empire,  the  frequent  meetings  of  the  assemblies 
of  the  people  to  decide  the  weightiest  matters  whether  of  war 
or  peace,  the  athletic  exercises  and  contests,  the  schools  of 
the  sophists  and  of  the  philosophers,  the  noble  art  with  which 
all  the  public  places  were  adorned  —  with  such  an  environ- 
ment the  people  were  at  school  all  the  time.  And  the  best 
of  it  all  was  that  with  them  it  was  not  only  business  but 
recreation.  One  of  their  chief  pastimes  was  listening  to 
their  orators,  delighting  in  the  keen  and  brilliant  fencing  of 
the  Ecclesia  as  at  a  spectacle.^  All  this  was  part  of  "the 
busy,  rhythmic,  colored  life  of  Greece."  It  made  fife  for  the 
Athenians  a  sort  of  perpetual  holiday.  If  one  is  asked  for 
the  proofs  that  the  Attic  Demos  had  such  artistic  and  lit- 
erary taste  beyond  other  peoples,  it  is  enough  to  say  that 
Pericles  and  Demosthenes  swayed  them  as  no  other  speakers ; 

'  Quoted  by  Lord  Brougham  in  Inaugural  Discourse  (Speeches,  iii,  p.  82, 
foot-note).  2  Cf.  Thuc.  iii,  38. 


ORATORY  181 

that  for  them  were  composed  the  Agamemnon  and  Prometheus, 
the  Antigone  and  Oedipus  Rex;  for  them  Thucydides  wrote 
his  immortal  history,  and  Plato  his  incomparable  dialogues ; 
for  their  delectation  Ictinus  built  and  Phidias  adorned  with 
marble  sculptures  the  Parthenon. 

Oratory  as  a  fine  art  begins  with  Gorgias  and  Isocrates; 
eloquence  as  a  divine  gift  already  characterized  Achilles  and 
Odysseus,  or  at  least  the  poet  who  created  them.  Oratory 
has  always  been  the  handmaid  of  liberty,  and  we  could  be 
sure,  even  if  we  did  not  know  it  from  Homer,  that  the  race 
which  first  enjoyed  freedom  and  developed  popular  govern- 
ment would  prize  persuasive  speech  as  one  of  the  greatest  of 
human  endowments.  It  was  the  voice  of  the  people  that 
decided  matters  in  the  Greek  host  at  Troy;  the  assemblies 
in  the  Greek  camp  were  but  the  counterpart  of  those  in 
Thessaly  and  Ithaca,  and  it  was  the  voice  of  powerful  and 
persuasive  speakers  that  swayed  men  in  the  one  place  or  the 
other.  The  Homeric  triad  of  excellences  was  ''power  of  dis- 
course" (ayopr]Tv<;) J  "physical  prowess"  (<f>v^),  and  "good 
sense"  (</>p£Ves).  Odysseus  enumerates'^  the  "three  prime 
endowments  that  can  be  received  from  the  providence  of  the 
gods  —  eloquence,  beauty,  and  the  power  of  thought." 
Peleus  sent  along  with  Achilles  to  Troy  the  aged  Phoenix 
to  train  him  to  be  "both  a  speaker  of  words  and  a  doer  of 
deeds";  and  this  ideal  of  Hellenic  manhood  is  represented 
by  the  poet  as  the  best  fighter,  the  swiftest  runner,  the  most 
powerful  speaker,  and  withal  fond  of  music.  Telemachus 
made  a  very  creditable  first  appearance  in  the  assembly  of 
the  people  in  Ithaca.  That  was  no  wonder ;  he  was  the  son 
of  Odysseus,  of  whom  the  poet  said,  "When  he  uttered  his 
great  voice  from  his  chest  and  words  like  unto  the  snow- 
flakes  of  winter,  then  no  mortal  could  contend  with  Odys- 
seus." 2  And  from  such  a  speaker  come  fittingly  words  like 
these:    "The  gods  do  not  give  every  gracious  gift  to  all, 

» Od.  viii.  168.  2 II.  iii.  221  fif. 


182  GREEK  LITERATURE 

neither  shapeliness  nor  wisdom,  nor  skilled  speech.  For  one 
man  is  feebler  than  another  in  presence,  yet  the  gods  crown 
his  words  with  beauty,  and  men  behold  him  and  rejoice,  and 
his  speech  runs  surely  on  its  way  with  sweet  modesty,  and  he 
shines  forth  among  the  gathering  of  the  people,  and  as  he 
passes  through  the  town  men  gaze  on  him  as  a  god."  ^ 

There  were  many  kinds  of  eloquence  among  Homer's 
heroes.  It  was  in  reminiscence  that  Nestor's  speech  "flowed 
sweeter  than  honey."  It  might  be  pathos  that  is  required, 
and  then  the  aged  Priam  will  say  to  Achilles,  "I  have  borne 
what  no  one  on  earth  has  ever  borne,  to  lift  to  my  lips  the 
hand  of  the  man  who  has  slain  my  son."  Of  its  kind  nothing 
could  be  more  artful  and  effective  than  the  plea  of  the  hungry 
outcast  Odysseus  to  the  maiden  Nausicaa  for  protection  and 
food  and  raiment.  For  a  proud  warrior  insulted  and  wronged 
the  reply  of  Achilles  to  Agamemnon's  envoys,  offering  apolo- 
gies and  gifts,  will  perhaps  remain  forever  unequalled.  "It 
seems  to  me  that  his  speeches,"  says  Gladstone,  "may  chal- 
lenge comparison  with  all  that  we  find  in  Homer,  and  with 
all  that  the  ebb  and  flow  of  three  thousand  years  have  added 
to  our  records  of  human  eloquence."  ^  These  Homeric 
speakers  were  the  forerunners  of  the  great  orators  of  the 
Pnyx  five  hundred  years  later.  "A  faculty  of  debate," 
says  Gladstone,  "never  surpassed,  if  ever  equalled  in  human 
history,  is  found  in  both  poems."  It  is  just  here  that  Jebb 
rightly  finds  the  secret  of  our  liking  for  the  speeches  of  Homer. 
"Nor  does  any  oratory,"  he  says,  "that  the  ancient  world  has 
left  approach  so  nearly  as  the  Homeric  to  the  modern  ideal. 
The  reason  of  this  is  that  the  great  orations  of  the  Iliad  are 
made  in  debate,  and  the  greatest  of  all  are  replies  —  as  the 
answer  of  Achilles  to  the  envoys  in  the  ninth  book.  Con- 
densed statement,  lucid  argument,  repartee,  sarcasm,  irony, 
overwhelming  invective,  profound  and  irresistible  pathos  — 
all  these  resources  are  absolutely  commanded  by  the  orators 

1  Od.  viii.  167  ff.  '  Juventus  Mundi,  p.  432. 


ORATORY  183 

of  the  Iliad,  and  all  these  must  have  belonged  to  him,  or  to 
those,  by  whom  the  Iliad  was  created."^  "When  we  find 
these  speeches  in  Homer,"  saj'^s  Gladstone,  "we  know  that 
there  must  have  been  men  who  could  speak  them,  so  from 
the  existence  of  units  who  could  speak  them,  we  know  that 
there  must  have  been  crowds  who  could  feel  them."  ^ 

It  was  with  an  elegy  that  the  supposedlj^  crazy  Solon 
addressed  the  Athenians  in  the  Agora,  rousing  them  to  retake 
Salamis  from  the  Megarians.  But  his  words  mark  the  orator 
rather  than  the  poet:  "Let  me  be  a  Pholegandrian  or  a 
Sicinete  instead  of  an  Athenian,  exchanging  my  fatherland ; 
for  soon  will  this  report  go  forth  among  men:  'An  Attic 
man  this,  one  of  the  betrayers  of  Salamis.'  Let  us  on  to 
Salamis,  to  fight  for  the  lovely  island,  and  wipe  out  the 
bitter  shame."  The  form  is  verse,  but  it  clothes  an  impas- 
sioned popular  harangue.  The  leading  spirit  of  the  Persian 
Wars,  too,  was  preeminently  "a  speaker  of  words  and  a 
doer  of  deeds."  Thucydides  (i.  138)  thus  describes  The- 
mistocles  :  "The  ablest  judge  of  the  course  to  be  pursued  in 
a  sudden  emergency  and  the  readiest  to  divine  what  was 
likely  to  happen  in  the  remotest  future.  Whatever  he  had 
in  hand  he  had  the  power  to  set  forth  to  others." 

But  speakers  like  Achilles  and  Odysseus,  and  later  like 
Solon  and  Themistocles,  were  only  men  of  extraordinary 
ora.torical  gifts :  it  was  not  art,  but  nature ;  and  practice 
made  perfect.  A  speech  might  be  a  great  one,  but  its 
effect  and  influence  were  transitory ;  or,  not  being  written, 
it  was  heard  and  forgotten.  Oratory  proper  begins  when 
speeches  begin  to  be  written,  and  the  history  of  Greek 
oratory  commences  with  Gorgias  of  Leontini.  The  epoch 
may  be  dated  from  his  embassy  to  Athens  in  427  B.C.  The 
distinguishing  element  of  his  speech,  which  aimed  above  all 
at  beauty  of  expression  —  "to  charm  the  ear,  as  much  as  to 
amuse  the  mind"  —  was  its   poetical  character.     It  "imi- 

1  Attic  Orators,  i.  p.  cvii.  '  Homer  and  the  Homeric  Age,  iii.  p.  107. 


184  GREEK   LITERATURE 

tated  the  rhythm  as  well  as  the  phrase  of  poetry."  Poetical 
phraseology,  symmetrical  arrangement,  balance  of  clauses, 
assonance,  characterized  a  prose  with  a  rhythm  so  striking 
as  to  make  an  appeal  much  like  that  of  verse.  Gorgias  used 
ornamental  epithets,  some  one  has  said,  "not  as  a  relish,  but 
as  food."  His  oratory  delighted  men's  ears  ;  for  the  time  it 
seemed  artistic  and  beautiful,  and  aroused  enthusiasm. 
Judging  from  the  specimens  we  have  in  fragments  it  is  hard 
to  realize  that  Athenians  of  the  close  of  the  fifth  century,  the 
same  men  that  appreciated  Sophocles  in  the  theatre  and 
Pericles  in  the  Agora,  should  have  received  Gorgias'  brilliant 
rhetoric  with  boundless  applause ;  that  its  effect  should 
have  been  sensational.  But  we  come  to  Gorgias  familiar 
with  the  speeches  of  orators  that  had  got  rid  of  his  defects 
and  had  brought  to  perfection  what  was  best  in  his  method ; 
in  other  words,  Demosthenes  has  spoiled  our  taste  for  oratory 
like  that  of  Gorgias.  Its  defects  are  plain  enough  now  ;  but 
when  all  deductions  are  made,  the  fact  remains  that  Gorgias 
was  the  founder  of  artistic  prose.  "On  the  whole  his  merit  is 
in  having  been  for  Thucydides  almost  what  Isocrates  was  for 
Demosthenes  or  Bossuet  for  Balzac.  He  rendered  the  in- 
strument flexible,  and  put  it  into  the  hands  of  the  great 
artist."  1 

The  first  name  in  the  Canon,  or  list  of  ten  best  orators  made 
by  later  critics,  is  Antiphon.  Tradition  made  Thucydides 
his  pupil ;  and  indeed  in  Gorgias  and  Antiphon  ^  we  have 
perhaps  the  two  influences  which  chiefly  affected  the  style  of 
Thucydides.  The  speeches  which  the  historian  inserts  in  his 
narrative  are  so  important  that  they  cannot  be  overlooked 
in  any  treatment  of  Greek  oratory.  These  speeches — • 
forty-one  in  number,  including  the  famous  Funeral  Oration 

»  Croiset,  Abridged  History  of  Greek  Literature,  p.  285. 
*  Limits  of  space  prevent  any  discussion  of  the  merits  of  Antiphon,  An- 
docides,  Isaeus,  Lycurgus,  and  Dinarchus. 


ORATORY  185 

by  Pericles  —  are  represented  as  spoken  by  leading  actors 
in  the  great  drama  of  the  Peloponnesian  War.  Thucydides 
thus  states  the  principles  which  guided  him  in  their  compo- 
sition: "As  to  the  various  speeches  made  on  the  eve  of  the 
war,  or  in  its  course,  I  have  found  it  difficult  to  retain  a 
memory  of  the  precise  words  which  I  had  heard  spoken ; 
and  so  it  was  with  those  who  had  brought  me  reports.  But 
I  have  made  the  persons  say  what  it  seemed  to  me  most 
opportune  for  them  to  say  in  view  of  each  situation ;  at  the 
same  time  I  have  adhered  as  closely  as  possible  to  the  general 
sense  of  what  was  actually  said."  ^  No  doubt  we  have  here 
a  candid  and  truthful  statement  of  Thucydides'  procedure. 
Here,  as  everywhere  else  in  his  history,  he  faithfully  repre- 
sents the  cardinal  facts  of  the  situation  as  he  saw  them. 
Many  of  the  speeches  that  were  actually  made  on  various 
occasions  are  doubtless  given  in  substance,  but  the  form  is 
the  historian's.  "The  work  is  meant  to  be  a  possession 
forever,  not  the  rhetorical  triumph  of  an  hour."  Thus  the 
great  historian  expresses  his  ideal ;  and  it  is  due  largely  to 
the  speeches  that  his  aim  has  been  realized.  "It  is  chiefly 
by  these,"  says  Jebb,  "that  the  facts  of  the  Peloponnesian 
War  are  transformed  into  typical  examples  of  universal  laws 
and  illuminated  with  a  practical  significance  for  the  students 
of  politics  in  every  age  and  country."  It  was  the  speeches 
doubtless  which  the  elder  Pitt  had  chiefly  in  mind  when  he 
called  Thucydides'  history  "that  eternal  manual  of  states- 
men." How  constituent  a  part  they  are  of  the  work  we  can 
realize  by  imagining  the  first  seven  books  in  the  state  in 
which  the  eighth  was  left.  We  can  as  easily  conceive  of  the 
tragedies  of  Aeschylus  and  Sophocles  without  choruses, 
as  of  the  history  of  Thucydides  without  speeches. 

Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus  distinguishes  three  principal 
styles  of  composition,  the  "austere"  or  grand,  the  "middle" 
or   smooth,    and   the   "plain."     His   representative   of   the 

1  Thuc.  i,  22. 


186  GREEK   LITERATURE 

"austere"  style  in  lyric  poetry  is  Pindar,  in  tragedy  Aesch3'lus, 
in  history  Thucydides,  in  oratory  Antiphon.  A  part  of  his 
description  of  the  "austere"  st3de  seems  especially  applicable 
to  Thucydides.  "As  regards  separate  words,  these  are  the 
objects  of  its  pursuit  and  craving.  In  whole  clauses  it  shows 
these  tendencies  no  less  strongly,  especially  it  chooses  the 
most  dignified  and  majestic  rhythms.  It  does  not  wish  the 
clauses  to  be  like  each  other  in  length  or  structure,  or  enslaved 
to  a  severe  syntax,  but  noble,  simple,  free.  It  wishes  them 
to  bear  the  stamp  of  nature  rather  than  that  of  art,  and  to 
stir  feeling  rather  than  to  reflect  character.  It  does  not 
usually  aim  at  composing  periods  as  a  compact  framework 
for  its  thought ;  but  if  it  should  ever  drift  undesignedly  into 
the  periodic  style,  it  desires  to  set  on  this  the  mark  of  spon- 
taneity and  plainness.  It  does  not  employ,  in  order  to  round 
a  sentence,  supplementary  words  which  do  not  help  the  sense ; 
it  does  not  care  that  the  march  of  its  phrase  should  have  stage- 
glitter  or  an  artificial  smoothness ;  nor  that  the  clauses 
should  be  separately  adapted  to  the  length  of  the  speaker's 
breath." 1 

Voltaire's  sarcasm,  "Set  speeches  are  a  sort  of  oratorical 
lie,  which  the  historian  used  to  allow  himself  in  old  times," 
does  not  apply  to  Thucydides,  though  he  was  the  originator 
of  that  custom.  His  dramatic  way  of  making  historical  per- 
sons express,  at  critical  moments  of  the  war,  ideas  that 
exerted  an  important  influence,  is  conducive  to  the  vivid  and 
truthful  presentment  of  action.  The  language  of  the  speeches 
is  wholly  or  chiefly  his  own  ;  dramatic  truth  is  in  the  matter, 
not  the  form,  for  there  is  little  discrimination  in  the  style  of 
the  various  speeches.  The  expression  of  character  is  like 
that  of  Greek  tragedy  —  typical  rather  than  individual. 
The  dignity  of  history,  as  Thucydides  conceived  it,  allowed 
no  greater  latitude.  If  he  had  had  before  him  the  original 
speeches,  he  would  doubtless  have  remodelled  the  expression 

1  Uepl  avvd.  ovo/j..  c.  22. 


ORATORY  187 

to  conform  to  his  general  plan,  as  he  seems  to  have  done  with 
the  letter  of  Nicias  in  the  seventh  book. 

It  is  in  the  speeches,  or  resumes  of  situations,  that  his 
literary  dialect,  if  it  may  be  called  so,  is  most  marked ;  and 
it  is  here,  according  to  Dionysius,  that  the  force  of  his  genius 
is  most  manifest.  The  speeches  are  simple  and  plain  in 
structure,  but  so  condensed  in  expression,  so  laden  with 
thought  —  "an  inexhaustible  mine  of  political  observations 
and  profound  reflections"  —  that  even  a  popular  Athenian 
audience  must  have  found  them  difficult  to  follow.  Thu- 
cydides  has  a  great  wealth  of  archaic  or  poetic  words,  and 
coins  a  multitude  of  new  ones ;  the  general  effect  of  which  is 
to  lend  greater  nobility  to  his  language.  In  this  the  influence 
of  Gorgias  may  perhaps  be  seen.  Thucydides'  use  and 
sometimes  abuse  of  antithesis,  the  constant  balancing  of 
Ao'yos  and  «pyov,  possibly  his  fondness  for  archaic  and  poetic 
terms,  may  be  signs  of  the  Gorgian  influence  so  strong  at 
Athens  just  when  he  was  composing  the  history.  I  prefer 
to  believe,  however,  that  he  was  influenced  by  Pindar  and 
Aeschylus  rather  than  by  Gorgias,  both  in  his  poetic  vocabu- 
lary and  in  his  new-coined  terms.  Corresponding  to  all 
this  is  his  frequent  use  of  neuter  adjectives  and  participles 
as  substantives,  his  constant  employment  of  verbal  substan- 
tives, especially  those  ending  in  -ti^s  and  -o-ts,  and  certain 
peculiarities  in  orthography :  (to-  for  tt^  iw  for  o-iV,  -^s  for 
-CIS.  The  effect  of  the  use  of  poetic  terms  familiar  to  Greek 
readers  from  their  great  national  text-l)ook.  Homer,  or  asso- 
ciated in  their  minds  with  all  that  had  thrilled  and  purified 
them  in  their  great  drama,  was  like  borrowing  biblical  words, 
which  everybody  knows  and  which  are  consecrated  by  asso- 
ciation, to  describe  some  event  of  unusual  moment.  Like 
the  great  artist  that  he  is,  he  gives  just  enough  particulars 
to  make  the  picture  clear  and  real,  leaving  all  the  rest  to  the 
imagination.  He  is  a  master  of  stern  and  solemn  pathos,  the 
pathos  of  naked,  awful  facts  expressed  by  a  few  vivid  touches 


188  GREEK  LITERATURE 

in  words  fitly  chosen  or  coined  to  reveal  the  depth  and  hope- 
lessness of  woe. 

Perhaps  the  speeches  that  remain  most  distinctly  impressed 
on  the  memory  are  that  of  the  Corinthians  in  Book  I,  those 
spoken  by  Pericles,  especially  the  great  Funeral  Oration,  the 
debate  between  Cleon  and  Diodotus,  the  appeal  for  life  of  the 
condemned  Plataeans,  the  speeches  of  Nicias  and  Gylippus 
before  the  final  sea-fight  in  the  Great  Harbor  at  Syracuse, 
and  Nicias's  final  appeal  to  his  despairing  army  as  they  started 
on  the  march  that  ended  in  the  catastrophe  at  the  river 
Assinarus.  For  pathos  perhaps  nothing  so  touches  us  as  the 
despairing  appeal  of  the  Plataeans.  There  is  nothing  any- 
where that  so  completely  represents  the  spirit  and  glory  of 
Periclean  Athens  as  the  sublime  Funeral  Oration.  "  In  a  word 
I  declare,"  says  the  great  statesman,  "that  our  city  as  a  whole 
is  the  school  of  Hellas ;  while  every  individual  citizen  among 
us,  it  seems  to  me,  would  prove  himself  personally  qualified, 
without  aid  from  others,  to  meet  exigencies  the  most  varied, 
with  a  versatility  the  most  graceful.  That  this  is  no  mere 
rhetorical  vaunt,  but  the  real  truth,  our  political  power,  the 
achievement  of  our  national  character,  is  itself  proof.  For  of 
all  existing  states  Athens  alone  eclipses  her  prestige  when  put 
to  the  test ;  she  alone  causes  no  mortification  to  the  invading 
foe  when  he  thinks  by  whom  he  is  repulsed,  no  self-reproach 
to  the  subject  for  being  ruled  by  those  who  are  not  worthy. 
So  far  from  our  supremacy  needing  attestation,  shown  with 
the  clearest  proofs  it  will  command  the  admiration  of  future 
ages  as  it  already  does  of  our  own ;  we  need  no  Homer  to 
sing  our  praises,  nor  any  other  poet  whose  verse  may  charm 
for  the  moment,  even  though  history  mar  the  conception 
he  raises  of  our  deeds."  ^ 

The  logographers,  or  lawyers  who  wrote  speeches  to  be 
read  or  recited  by  others,  contributed  much  to  the  develop- 
ment of  oratory.     Among  these  men  Lysias  stands  first, 

1  ii,  41. 


ORATORY  189 

The  logographer  did  not  appear  in  person  for  his  cHent,  and 
it  was  his  business  in  writing  the  speech  to  assume  the  char- 
acter of  the  actual  Htigant,  who  would  generally  be  some  man 
of  the  people  without  experience  in  legal  questions.  He 
needed  to  conceal  himself  behind  his  client  and  identify  him- 
self as  completely  as  possible  with  him.  This  seems  so  na- 
tural that  we  might  have  presumed  that  the  early  logo- 
graphers  had  all  done  so.  But  no,  it  was  a  discovery  of  Lysias. 
]\Iost  of  the  thirty-four  extant  speeches  were  composed  for 
clients  to  speak,  and  we  are  ready  to  believe  that  Lj^sias  was 
averse  to  the  personal  contests  of  the  Agora.  He  lacked 
the  fighting  spirit,  oratorical  fire,  passion,  vehemence.  He 
seems  to  have  been  really  a  Hterary  man,  a  shrewd  observer 
of  the  varying  types  of  human  nature,  with  a  pronounced 
dramatic  faculty ;  a  pleader  because  pleading  was  a  means 
of  making  a  living,  and  for  this  he  had  extraordinary  gifts. 
With  an  exquisite  feeling  for  language,  he  adopted  a  manner 
which  has  always  been  considered  the  norm  for  the  "plain 
style,"  avoiding  poetic  terms  and  idioms  and  using  the  vo- 
cabulary of  current  everyday  speech.  Apparently  artless,  it 
was  exquisitely  artful.  It  was  highly  persuasive  because 
it  seemed  so  natural. 

His  ethopoiia,  or  expression  of  character,  Dionysius  finds 
displayed  in  three  particulars  —  thought,  diction,  and  com- 
position ;  that  is,  the  idioms,  the  words,  and  the  style  are 
recognized  as  exactly  appropriate  to  the  man  for  whom  Lysias 
wrote  the  speech,  so  that  we  feel,  as  the  jury  must  have  felt, 
that  the  litigant  was  speaking  for  himself.  And  so  we  have 
in  each  of  the  speeches  individual  types  of  men  vividly  rep- 
resented. These  live  before  our  eyes.  We  hear  with  com- 
plete sjTnpathy  the  plea  of  the  genial  cripple  for  his  pension 
of  one  obol  per  day,  of  which  the  malice  of  an  enemy  is  about 
to  deprive  him.  It  is  clearly  a  sketch  from  life,  in  the  spirit 
of  Herondas  or  Horace.  The  fee  in  this  case  could  not  have 
meant  anything  to  Lysias;   what  tempted  him  was  the  op- 


190  GREEK  LITERATURE 

portunity  to  sketch  a  unique  character  whom  every  one  knew. 
Then  there  is  the  man  accused  of  digging  up  a  sacred  ohve 
stump,  and  his  defense  reveals  a  modest  citizen  who  takes 
pride  in  quietly  and  unostentatiously  performing  all  his 
public  duties.  A  sketch  from  life,  too,  is  Mantitheus,  the 
ambitious  young  Eupatrid  standing  his  examination  before 
the  Senate.  What  a  pleasant  impression  all  these  leave  on 
our  memories,  and  how  apt  we  are,  if  we  turn  to  one  of  these 
sketches  to  verify  a  reference,  to  become  interested,  forget 
the  reference,  and  run  through  the  whole  sketch  again! 

That  is  due  to  the  charm  (xap's),  that  nameless  grace  which 
is  inexplicable  and  unanalyzable,  but  which  all  feel  to  be 
there.  To  the  Greek  critic  it  was  the  final  criterion  of  genu- 
ine work  of  Lysias.  "When  I  am  puzzled,"  says  Dionysius, 
"about  one  of  the  speeches  ascribed  to  him,  and  when  it  is 
hard  for  me  to  find  the  truth,by  other  marks,  I  have  recourse 
to  this  excellence,  as  to  the  last  piece  on  the  board.  Then  if 
the  graces  of  speech  seem  to  me  to  make  the  writing  fair,  I 
count  it  to  be  the  soul  of  Lysias ;  and  I  care  not  to  look 
further  into  it.  But  if  the  stamp  of  the  language  has  no 
winningness,  no  loveliness,  I  am  chagrined,  and  suspect  that 
after  all  the  speech  is  not  by  Lysias ;  and  I  do  no  more  vio- 
lence to  my  instinct,  even  though  in  all  else  the  speech  seems 
to  me  clever  and  well  finished,  believing  that  to  write  well, 
in  special  styles  other  than  this,  is  given  to  many  men,  but 
that  to  write  winningly,  gracefully,  with  loveliness,  is  the 
gift  of  Lysias."  ^ 

Considered  from  the  Greek  point  of  view  Lysias  reasons 
cogently  and  with  force,  but  the  quality  which,  along  with 
ethopoiia,  especially  distinguishes  him  is  the  gift  of  stating 
a  case.  No  other  talent  is  more  important  for  a  lawyer  or 
public  speaker.  A  great  jurist  once  said  that  many  a  lawyer 
wins  his  case  with  the  jury  before  he  begins  his  formal  ar- 
gument on  the  evidence,  simply  by  the  way  in  which  he 

1  Dion.  H.,  De  Lys.  11. 


ORATORY  191 

states  his  case.  The  arrest  of  Lysias  and  his  brother  Pole- 
marchus  by  Eratosthenes,  and  all  the  vividly  enumerated 
details  of  the  pillage  of  the  house,  the  murder  of  Polemarchus, 
the  escape  and  flight  of  Lysias,  makeup  a  narrative  in  which  we 
see  everything  as  it  happens,  and  have  a  picture  of  the  crimes 
of  the  Thirty  Tyrants  that  will  forever  remain  a  part  of  the 
history  of  that  period  of  anarchy  and  spoliation.  This  greatest 
of  his  orations,  the  only  one  of  those  extant  known  to  have 
been  spoken  by  Lysias  himself,  alone  justifies  his  claim  to  all 
the  chief  qualities  enumerated  by  his  partial  critic  —  plainness 
and  easy  versatility,  purity  of  diction,  simplicity,  vividness. 

The  reader  of  the  Eratosthenes,  the  Mantitheus,  the  Cripple, 
the  Sacred  Olive,  cannot  fail  to  recognize  that  here  is  admi- 
rable prose,  that  Lysias  is  a  writer  of  extraordinary  gifts.  It 
is  his  oratorical  power  that  may  be  questioned.  We  have 
touched  upon  his  shining  qualities;  what  are  his  defects? 
"He  was  deficient  in  pathos  and  in  fire,"  says  Jebb;  and  it 
seems  a  fair  criticism.  This  may  have  been  due  to  the  same 
sort  of  self-restraint  that  caused  Thucydides  simply  to  give 
such  a  grouping  of  facts  as  would  produce  the  effect,  without 
anything  more.  For  history,  that  affords  the  greatest  kind 
of  pathos ;  but  with  the  orator  there  must  be  more  fervent 
personal  expression.  At  any  rate,  in  the  matter  of  pathos, 
Lysias  does  not  produce  the  effect  of  Thucydides.  As  to  fire, 
that  is,  the  passion  of  the  speaker,  one  needs  only  to  compare 
Lysias  with  Demosthenes  to  realize  the  vast  difference. 
He  lacks  two  other  things,  his  ancient  admirer,  Dionysius, 
admitted  —  grandeur  and  spirit.^  "He  touches,  but  does 
not  pierce  the  heart ;  he  charms,  but  fails  to  astonish  or  to 
appal."  The  want  of  these  qualities  kept  him  out  of  the  class 
of  Demosthenes,  or  even  of  Hyperides.  But  he  taught,  and 
may  still  teach,  an  inestimable  lesson  —  that  the  finest  art 
is  that  which  conceals  itself.  And  it  would  be  impossible  to 
Bay  how  much  his  influence  helped  to  check  the  tendency  of 

'  Dion.  H.,  De  Lys.  c.  13. 


192  GREEK  LITERATURE 

public  speaking  to  yield  to  the  allurement  of  artificial  orna- 
ments ;  we  do  know  that  it  was  the  style  of  Lysias  on  which 
the  advocates  of  Atticism  later  took  their  stand  in  the  con- 
flict with  Asianism. 

''It  might  have  seemed  that  a  finished  simplicity  so  conge- 
nial to  the  Attic  spirit  had  forever  superseded  the  ideal  of 
Gorgias.     But  just  as  the  influence  of  that  ideal  was  declin- 
ing, a  pupil  of  Gorgias  came  forward  to  show  that  his  master's 
theory,  though  deformed  by  extravagances,  was  grounded  in 
truth.     Isocrates   proved   that,    without    loss   of   ease   and 
fluency,  prose  may  be  artistically  ornate  in  the  general  sense 
of  Gorgias  (that  is,  with  the  aid  of  certain  embellishments 
proper  to  poetry),  if  only  these  are  rightly  chosen  and  tem- 
perately used."  ^     In  these  words  Jebb  makes  the  transition 
from  Lysias  to  Isocrates.     Great  things  were  expected  from 
the  young  Isocrates,  as  may  be  guessed  from  Plato's  Phae- 
drus.2    "  Isocrates,  is  still  young,  Phaedrus,"  Plato  makes  Soc- 
rates say,  "but  I  don't  mind  telling  you  what  I  prophesy  of 
him."     "And  what  may  that  be?"     "He  seems  to  me  to 
have  a  genius  above  the  oratory  of  Lysias,  and  altogether  to 
be  tempered  of  nobler  elements.     And  so  it  would  not  sur- 
prise me  if,  as  years  go  on,  he  should  make  all  his  predecessors 
seem  like  children  in  the  kind  of  oratory  to  which  he  is  now 
addressing  himself ;    or  if  —  supposing  this  should  not  con- 
tent him  —  some  diviner  impulse  should  lead  him  to  greater 
things.     My  dear  Phaedrus,  a  certain  philosophy  is  inborn  in 
him.     This  is  my  message,  then,  from  the  gods  of  the  place 
to  my  pet  Isocrates  —  and  you  have  your  message  for  your 
Lysias."     Such  recognition  from  Plato  was  like  Macaulay's 
prediction  about  the  young  Gladstone,  "The  rising  hope  of 
the  stern  and  unbending  Tories" ;   or  like  the  aged  Goethe's 
hail  to  the  young  Carlyle  across  the  German  ocean  :  "  Carlyle 
is  a  moral  force  of  great  significance.     He  has  a  great  future 
before  him,  and  indeed  we  can  see  no  end  to  all  he  will  do  and 

1  Jebb,  Attic  Orators,  ii.  p.  427.  ^  Phaedr.  278-279  e. 


ORATORY  193 

effect  by  his  influence."  ^  Plato  at  that  time  evidently  ex- 
pected Isocrates  to  rise  from  the  art  of  expression  to  the 
search  for  truth.  He  remained  always  on  the  lower  level; 
but  even  thus  our  indebtedness  to  him  is  inestimable. 

The  object  of  Gorgias  was  oral  and  extemporary  eloquence. 
Isocrates'  ideal  might  have  been  the  same  if  he  had  had  the 
necessary  qualifications  to  realize  it.  Endowed  with  great 
talent  and  ambitious  to  excel  in  public  oratory,  Isocrates  had 
neither  voice  nor  nerve  equal  to  the  demands  of  the  Agora 
and  the  Ecclesia.  He  doubtless  has  his  own  case  in  mind 
when  he  says,  in  the  Antidosis:^  "The  physical  and  the 
mental  training  will  alike  improve  natural  powers.  But  the 
master  of  the  palaestra  cannot  make  a  great  athlete,  nor  the 
teacher  of  philosophy  a  great  speaker.  To  make  the  latter 
three  things  are  needed  —  capacity,  training,  and  practice. 
Capacity  —  which  includes  intellect,  voice,  and  nerve  —  is 
the  chief  requisite.  Practice,  however,  can  by  itself  make  a 
good  speaker.  Training  is  by  far  the  least  important  of  the 
three.  It  may  be  complete,  and  yet  be  rendered  useless  by 
the  absence  of  a  single  quahty  —  nerve."  Isocrates  had  a 
weak  voice  and  was  timid ;  so,  shut  out  from  the  courts  and 
the  Ecclesia,  he  opened  a  school  of  Rhetoric,  or  Philosophy  as 
he  preferred  to  call  it,  and  trained  young  men  for  public  life. 
Cicero^  compares  this  famous  school  to  the  Trojan  horse,  since 
from  it  had  come  forth  so  many  princes  of  eloquence.  Modern 
scholars  have  made  up  a  list  of  forty-one  persons  eminent  in 
oratory  or  history  who  had  studied  in  it.  In  the  panegyrical 
contest  which  the  queen  of  Caria  instituted  in  memory  of  her 
husband,  and  which  all  the  chief  rhetoricians  entered,  tradi- 
tion has  it  that  of  all  the  competitors  there  was  not  one  who 
was  not  a  disciple  of  Isocrates. 

Along  with  his  school  work  he  also  became  an  active  writer 
on  public  questions  of  the  day,  a  political  essayist  discussing 

'  Conversations  with  Eckermann,  July  25,  1827. 
«  Cf.  §§  180-192.  '  De  Oratore,  ii.  2.  94. 


194  GREEK   LITERATURE 

subjects  of  national,  preferably  of  international,  scope.  His 
chief  hobby  was  the  union  of  all  the  Greeks  in  the  invasion  of 
Persia  —  the  subject  of  his  greatest  work,  the  Panegyricus, 
which  he  is  said  to  have  spent  ten  years  in  elaborating,  and 
of  his  Philippus.  Isocrates  is  a  true  lover  of  Athens,  but  his 
contemplation  of  large  political  questions,  perhaps  also  his 
association  with  clever  youths  from  all  parts  of  the  Hellenic 
world,  gives  him  a  wider  outlook ;  so  that  in  a  famous  passage 
of  the  Panegyricus  ^  he  anticipates  the  civilization  of  Hellen- 
ism: "Athens  has  so  distanced  the  rest  of  the  world  in  power 
of  thought  and  speech  that  her  disciples  have  become  the 
teachers  of  all  other  men.  She  has  brought  it  to  pass  that 
the  name  of  Greek  should  be  thought  no  longer  a  matter  of 
race,  but  a  matter  of  intelligence ;  and  should  be  given  to  the 
participators  in  our  culture  rather  than  to  sharers  of  our 
common  origin." 

Of  the  three  harmonies  or  styles  of  composition 
distinguished  by  Dionysius,  Isocrates  represents  the 
"smooth,"  and  well  does  he  illustrate  it:  "Nor  is  it 
only  between  word  and  word  that  this  style  seeks  apt 
juncture  and  coherence.  It  desires  that  clause  should  be 
closely  knitted  to  clause ;  that  every  sentence  should  be 
rounded  to  a  period ;  that  each  segment  of  a  period  should 
be  neither  shorter  nor  longer  than  the  just  mean ;  and  that 
the  whole  period  should  be  within  the  compass  of  one  full 
breath.  A  sentence  not  periodic,  a  period  not  jointed  into 
members,  or  a  member  not  symmetrical  with  the  rest,  are 
thoroughly  foreign  to  its  workmanship.  The  rhythms  which 
it  employs  are  not  the  longest,  but  the  middle  or  the  shorter. 
It  wishes  the  last  words  of  a  period  to  be  rhythmical  and 
firmly  set,  as  on  a  base  squared  by  line  and  rule  —  thus  re- 
versing, in  the  structure  of  these  final  clauses,  its  practice 
in  the  ordinary  harmonies  of  words.  Ordinarily  it  makes 
word  slide  into  word.     But  it  would  have  the  closing  words 

1  Panegyr.  50. 


ORATORY  195 

of  a  period  to  stand  clear,  and  be  seen,  as  it  were,  from  every 
side.  The  figures  which  it  uses  are  not  those  which  have  an 
antique  air,  or  which  are  notable  for  majesty  or  impressive- 
ness  or  ruggedness ;  but  rather  the  luxuriant  and  voluptuous 
in  which  the  elements  of  illusion  and  stage-glitter  are  strong. 
To  speak  generally  —  the  '  smooth '  or  '  florid '  style  is  in  es- 
sentials the  opposite  of  the  austere."  ^ 

The  discourses  of  Isocrates  were  meant  to  be  read  aloud,  not 
spoken.  The  chief  marks  of  his  prose  are  avoidance  of  poeti- 
cal diction,  an  ampler  period,  elimination  of  hiatus,  certain 
rhythmical  feet  at  the  beginning  and  end  of  sentences.  His 
diction  is  characterized  by  a  purity  as  great  as  that  of  Lj^sias, 
though  with  a  bent  toward  grandeur,  at  least  in  arrangement. 
Where  the  austere  school  relied  for  effect  on  words,  he  relied 
on  composition  ;  in  other  words,  he  developed  a  literary  prose 
rhythm.  Hiatus  he  so  carefully  avoided  that  Dionysius 
went  through  the  whole  Areopagiticus  without  finding  a  single 
example.  He  uses  sparingly  figures  of  thought,  but  abun- 
dantly figures  of  language  (antithesis),  balance  of  clauses 
(parisosis),  assonance  (paromoiosis).  The  distinctive  mark 
of  the  Isocratic  period  was  amplitude.  "Instead  of  aiming," 
as  Jebb  well  expresses  it,  "at  the  vigorous  compression  fittest 
for  real  contests,  it  rejoices  in  rich  diffuseness  —  it  unrolls 
itself  like  a  clear  river,  luring  the  hearer  on  from  bend  to  bend 
through  the  soft  beauties  of  its  winding  course."  But  avoid- 
ance of  hiatus  involved  excessive  care,  and  might  easily  be- 
come artificial.  The  perpetual  seeking  for  symmetry  in  bal- 
anced clauses  is  apt  to  become  tiresome.  The  great  fault 
of  his  ample  periods  is  monotony.  They  are  too  smooth,  too 
polished,  too  stately.  His  rhetoric  is  "for  the  palaestra,  not 
for  the  battlefield."  Dionysius,  comparing  a  passage  from 
Isocrates'  De  Pace^  with  one  from  Demosthenes'  Third 
Olynthiac,^  finds  the  former  a  "display  of  graces,"  the  latter 
a  "stirring  summons  to  action."     Isocrates  was  greatly  defi- 

>  Dc  comp.  verb,  c.  23.  '  §§  41-50.  '  §§  23-32. 


196  GREEK  LITERATURE 

cient,  the  ancients  agree,  in  that  vehemence  of  oratory  in 
which  the  feeHng  of  the  speaker  fires  his  audience.  The  dis- 
courses were  not  only  not  meant  to  be  spoken,  they  were  not 
even  adapted  for  declamation.  Hieronymus,  trying  the  ex- 
periment, found  they  would  not  bear  delivery  with  raised 
tones  or  passion  or  gesture.  "Isocrates  had  dropped  his 
voice  to  the  key  in  which  a  slave  reads  aloud  to  his  master." 
His  strongest  claim  upon  our  attention  is  that  he  was  the 
founder  of  literary  artistic  prose.  He  was  not  a  great  orator. 
His  chief  merit  is  to  have  made  possible  the  oratory  of  De- 
mosthenes ;  but  his  greatest  influence  upon  the  oratory  of  the 
world  was  effected  by  means  of  Cicero,  through  whom  the 
doctrine  and  the  style  of  Isocrates  have  influenced  the  rhetori- 
cal and  other  prose  not  only  of  ancient  but  of  modern  times. 
"His  beauty  and  his  majesty  are  genuinely  Greek,"  says  Jebb  ; 
"and  until  the  sense  of  these  is  wholly  lost  Isocrates  must 
always  rank  as  one  of  the  great  masters  of  expression."  As 
Isocrates'  oratory  was  epideictic,  meant  for  display,  we 
should  look  for  its  modern  counterpart  not  to  the  courts  or 
to  parliament,  but  to  the  pulpit.  It  is  there,  as  a  French 
scholar  pointed  out,  that  we  must  go  for  something  like  the 
effect  of  Isocrates'  periods,  perhaps  especially  to  Bossuet, 
who  acknowledged  indebtedness  for  his  st3de  to  Plato,  De- 
mosthenes, and  Isocrates. 

There  was  one  of  Demosthenes'  contemporaries  —  five 
years  older  —  whom  many  of  the  ancients  preferred  to  De- 
mosthenes himself.  This  was  Hyperides,  "the  Sheridan  of 
antiquity."  There  was  good  ground  for  this  popular  pref- 
erence. Hyperides  had  greater  natural  oratorical  gifts,  for 
he  combined  vehemence  and  force  with  ready  wit  and  grace ; 
he  was  as  simple  and  natural  and  easy  as  Lysias,  and  could 
be  as  smooth  and  polished  as  his  great  master  Isocrates. 
Besides,  he  might  have  been  a  great  actor  if  he  had  chosen. 
We  have  to  take  his  reputation  mainly  on  faith,  because  the  six 
orations  which  Egyptian  papyri  have  restored  to  us  in  the  past 


ORATORY  197 

century  are  so  badly  mutilated  that  no  adequate  judgment 
can  now  be  formed  of  his  excellences.  But  the  ancients  had 
fifty-two  authentic  speeches,  and  we  have  a  great  Greek  critic's 
estimate  based  thereon.  "Hyperides  hits  his  mark  neatly," 
says  Dionysius,  "but  seldom  lends  grandeur  to  his  theme. 
In  the  embellishment  of  his  diction  he  has  surpassed  Lysias ; 
in  the  astuteness  with  which  he  disposes  his  subject-matter 
he  has  surpassed  all.  Then  he  keeps  to  the  issue  throughout, 
and  insists  on  the  really  strong  points  of  his  arguments.  He 
commands  the  resources  of  a  large  intelligence ;  he  has  ex- 
quisite charm ;  and  while  he  appears  simple  is  no  stranger  to 
consummate  art.  He  is  especially  to  be  imitated  for  the  sub- 
tlety and  symmetry  of  his  narrations,  as  well  as  in  respect  to 
the  avenues  by  which  he  approaches  his  case."  ^ 

But  the  fullest  ancient  notice  of  him  is  from  the  treatise 
On  Sublimity :  ^  ''If  merits  were  to  be  counted,  not  weighed, 
Hyperides  would  stand  far  before  Demosthenes.  He  has 
more  tones  in  his  voice  than  Demosthenes,  and  a  greater 
number  of  excellences.  In  fact,  like  the  pentathlete,  Hy- 
perides is  second-best  all  round ;  for  the  prize  given  in  any 
branch,  he  comes  after  the  specialists,  but  before  the  laymen. 
Besides  imitating  the  merits  of  Demosthenes  in  everything 
except  composition,  Hyperides  has  further  mastered  in  an 
eminent  degree  the  excellences  and  graces  of  L3^sias.  He 
expresses  himself  in  the  plain  manner  where  it  is  fitting  —  not 
with  the  sustained  and  unvarying  tension  of  Demosthenes ; 
and  he  has  moral  persuasiveness,  with  the  flavor  of  an  un- 
studied suavity.  Incomparable  wit  plays  about  him ;  his 
sarcasm  is  in  perfect  keeping  with  political  oratory ;  he  is 
adroit  with  the  weapons  of  irony ;  his  jokes  are  not  jarring, 
ill-bred,  or  importunate,  in  the  'Attic'  manner  of  that  genera- 
tion ;  when  he  does  pull  to  pieces,  he  does  it  neatly,  with  much 
humor,  and  with  the  pungency  of  well-aimed  banter ;  and  with 
all  this,  there  is  a  l)eauty  of  style  beyond  imitation.     He  has 

»  Vet.  Script.  Cena.,  V.  6.  « £)e  Sublimilate,  c.  34. 


198  GREEK  LITERATURE 

great  power  of  pathos ;  in  relating  legends,  he  has  a  certain 
luxuriance,  and  a  facile  inspiration  that  wafts  him  most 
smoothly  from  point  to  point  on  his  way." 

But  as  Hyperides  had  many  of  the  striking  gifts  of  Fox 
and  Sheridan,  he  had  also  many  of  their  personal  weaknesses. 
He  lacked  the  great  moral  force  that  made  Demosthenes 
supreme,  and  he  did  not  spend  himself  on  the  composition  of 
his  discourses  as  did  the  author  of  the  De  Corona.     But  it  is 
an  immense  pity  that  his  speeches  are  lost  or  fragmentary ; 
for,  besides  his  grace  and  wit  and  polish,  he  is  as  easy  to  read 
as  Bacchylides,  and  almost  as  charming  as  Simonides  ;  so  that 
he  would  probably  have  been  the  most  popular  of  the  Greek 
orators  with  modern  readers.     The  best  idea  of  his  power  and 
his  charm  may  be  gained  through  an  extract  from  his  Funeral 
Oration   for  Leosthenes  and  his  comrades  who  fell  in  the 
Lamian  War:   "With  us,  and  with  all  the  living,  they  shall 
ever  have  renown ;  but  in  the  dark  under-world,  suffer  us  to 
ask,  who  are  they  that  will  stretch  a  right  hand  to  the  captain 
of  our  dead?     May  we  not  deem  that  Leosthenes  will  be 
greeted  with  welcome  and  with  wonder  by  those  demigods 
who  bore  arms  against  Troy  ?  .  .  .     Aye,  and  there,  I  ween, 
will  be  Miltiades  and  Themistocles  and  those  others  who  made 
Hellas  free,  to  the  credit  of  their  city,  to  the  glory  of  their 
names  —  men  whom  this  man  surpassed  in  courage  and  in 
council,  seeing  that  they  repelled  the  power  of  the  barbarians 
when  it  had  come  against  them,  but  he  forbade  its  approach ; 
theij  saw  the  foemen  fighting  in  their  own  country,  but  he 
worsted  his  enemies  on  the  enemy's  soil.    And  surely  they  who 
gave  the  people  trusty  proof  of  their  mutual  love,  Harmodius 
and  Aristogeiton,  will  count  no  friends  so  near  to  themselves, 
or  so  faithful  to  you,  as  Leosthenes  and  those  who  strove 
beside  him,  nor  will  they  so  consort  with  any  dwellers  in  the 
place  of  the  dead.     Well  may  it  be  so,  since  these  have  done 
deeds  not  less  than  theirs,  but,  if  it  may  be  said,  even  greater ; 
for  they  put  down  the  despots  of  their  own  city,  but  these  put 


ORATORY  199 

down  the  despots  of  Hellas.  O  beautiful  and  wonderful 
enterprise,  0  glorious  and  magnificent  devotion,  O  soldier- 
ship transcendent  in  dangers,  which  these  men  offered  to  the 
freedom  of  Greece  !" 

Then,  turning  to  the  kinsfolk  of  the  dead,  he  concludes  on 
this  wise:  "It  is  hard,  perhaps,  to  comfort  those  who  are  in 
such  a  sorrow ;  grief  is  not  laid  to  rest  by  speech  or  by  ob- 
servance ;  rather  is  it  for  the  nature  of  the  mourner,  and  the 
nearness  of  the  lost,  to  determine  the  boundaries  of  anguish. 
Still  we  must  take  heart  and  lighten  pain  as  we  may,  and  re- 
member not  only  the  death  of  the  departed,  but  the  good  name 
also  that  they  have  left  behind  them.  We  owe  not  tears  to 
their  fate,  but  rather  praise  to  their  deeds.  If  they  came  not 
to  old  age  among  men,  they  have  the  glory  that  never  grows 
old,  and  have  been  made  blessed  perfectly.  Those  among 
them  who  died  childless  shall  have  as  their  inheritors  the  im- 
mortal eulogies  of  Greece ;  and  those  of  them  who  have  left 
children  behind  them  have  bequeathed  a  trust  of  which  their 
country's  love  will  assume  the  guardianship.  More  than  this 
—  if  to  die  is  to  be  as  though  we  had  never  been,  then  these 
have  passed  away  from  sickness  and  pain  and  from  all  the  acci- 
dents of  earthly  life ;  or  if  there  is  consciousness  in  the  under- 
world, and  if,  as  we  conjecture,  the  care  of  the  Divine  Power 
is  over  it,  then  it  may  well  be  that  they  who  have  rendered 
aid  to  the  worship  of  the  gods  in  the  hour  of  its  imminent 
desolation  are  most  precious  to  that  Power's  providence."  ^ 

Aeschines,  the  great  rival  of  Demosthenes,  five  years  his 
senior,  was  of  humble  origin.  As  a  boy  he  seems  to  have 
assisted,  as  a  sort  of  janitor,  in  his  father's  school ;  later  he 
earned  his  living  as  scribe  or  secretary  of  certain  inferior 
magistrates ;  then  he  became  an  actor,  playing  generally 
tritagonist  parts ;  still  later  he  was  clerk  of  the  Assembly. 
His  experience  as  actor  and  as  assembly-clerk  was  of 
great  service  to  him  in  his  preparation  for  a  public  career. 

•  The  longer  translations  are  all  by  Jebb. 


200  GREEK  LITERATURE 

In  the  one  he  got  excellent  training  for  public  speaking; 
through  the  other  he  became  familiar  with  Attic  law  and 
the  procedure  of  the  courts.  He  had  most  of  the  prime  requi- 
sites of  success  as  an  orator,  and  prided  himself  on  his  natural 
faculty  of  eloquence.  He  was  fine-looking  and  of  imposing 
presence.  His  voice  was  magnificent  and  under  perfect  con- 
trol. He  had  doubtless  learned  on  the  stage  how  effective 
for  him  was  the  statuesque  pose  of  Pericles,  so  that  when 
speaking  in  the  Ecclesia  he  always  refrained  from  vehement 
action,  keeping  his  hand  under  his  robe.  He  aimed  at  dig- 
nity, eloquence  of  manner,  grace,  and  harmony,  and  the  word 
€VKoafj.La  (good  Order,  in  private  and  in  public)  was  much  on  his 
lips.  He  piqued  himself,  too,  on  his  culture,  and  was  fond  of 
quoting  from  the  poets.  His  rhetoric  was  fluent,  lucid,  often 
vehement,  and  generally  characterized  by  elegant  gravity. 
His  gift  of  narration  or  exposition  is  marked.  He  could  assume 
a  gayety  and  lightness  that  was  foreign  to  Demosthenes.  But 
he  lacked  his  loftier  thought  and  honesty  of  heart.  The 
moral  elevation  that  characterized  Demosthenes  was  wanting. 

It  is  impossible  for  us  now  to  do  justice  to  the  eloquence  of 
Aeschines,  for  during  practically  his  whole  public  life  he  was, 
as  the  head  of  the  Macedonian  party,  in  direct  antagonism 
to  Demosthenes,  and  we  come  to  him  under  the  spell  of  the 
latter's  vehement  denunciation.  We  read  his  speech  against 
Ctesiphon  mainly  for  the  light  it  may  throw  upon  the  reply 
in  which  Demosthenes  defended  at  once  himself  and  his 
mother-city.  More  than  four-fifths  of  the  jurors  decided  for 
Demosthenes  then;  the  whole  world  sides  with  him  now. 
For  us  Demosthenes  is  the  patriot,  and  necessarily  Aeschines, 
who,  consumed  with  jealousy  and  hatred,  opposed  all  that  he 
did,  bears  much  of  the  odium  of  the  traitor. 

If  we  could  read  them  without  prejudice,  his  three  speeches, 
against  Timarchus,  on  the  Embassy,  and  against  Ctesiphon, 
which  are  easy  to  read  and  have  much  interest  and  charm, 
(the  "three  graces,"   the   ancients  called  them)  would   be 


ORATORY  201 

more  popular.  Time  and  space  allow  us  here  to  give  only  a 
single  specimen  of  his  eloquence,  and,  in  fairness  to  Aeschines, 
that  should  come  from  the  peroration  of  the  speech  against 
Ctesiphon.  "Had  he  closed  that  noble  performance,"  says 
Lord  Brougham,  "before  the  last  sentence,  nothing  was  ever 
more  magnificent  than  his  peroration  would  have  been.  .  .  . 
Nothing  prevented  it  from  holding  forever  the  place  which 
the  celebrated  oath  in  Demosthenes  holds  at  the  head  of  all 
the  triumphs  of  rhetoric,  except  that  it  was  followed  by  this 
divine  passage,  to  which  its  merit  is  little  inferior,  and  to 
which  it  manifestly  gave  the  hint."  ^ 

"And  when  at  the  end  of  his  speech,"  says  Aeschines,  "he 
calls  as  his  advocates  those  who  shared  his  bribes,  imagine 
that  you  see  on  this  platform,  where  I  now  speak  before  you, 
an  array  drawn  up  to  confront  their  profligacy  —  the  bene- 
factors of  Athens  :  Solon,  who  ordered  the  democracy  by 
his  glorious  laws,  the  philosopher,  the  good  legislator,  en- 
treating you,  with  that  gravity  which  so  well  became  him, 
never  to  set  the  rhetoric  of  Demosthenes  above  your  oaths 
and  above  the  law ;  Aristides,  —  who  assessed  the  tribute  of 
the  Confederacy,  and  whose  daughters,  after  his  death,  were 
dowered  by  the  State  —  indignant  at  the  contumely  threat- 
ened to  Justice,  and  asking  Are  you  not  ashamed f  When 
Arthmios  of  Zeleia  brought  Persian  gold  to  Greece,  and  visited 
Athens,  our  fathers  well-nigh  put  him  to  death,  though  he  was 
our  public  guest,  and  proclaimed  him  expelled  from  Athens,  and 
from  all  the  territory  that  the  Athenians  rule;  while  Demos- 
thenes, who  has  not  brought  us  Persian  gold,  but  has  taken 
bribes  for  himself,  and  has  kept  theyn  to  this  day,  is  about  to 
receive  a  golden  wreath  from  you!  And  Themistocles,  and 
they  who  died  at  Marathon  and  Plataea,  aye,  and  the  very 
graves  of  our  forefathers  —  do  you  not  think  they  will  utter 
a  voice  of  lamentation  if  he  who  covenants  with  barbarians 
to  work  against  Greece  shall  be  —  crowned?" 

1  Dissertation  on  the  Eloquence  of  the  Ancients. 


202  GREEK  LITERATURE 

Schoolboys  know  the  stories  which  biographers  of  De- 
mosthenes tell  about  his  indomitable  persistency  in  over- 
coming the  difficulties  that  beset  the  path  to  the  goal  of  his 
ambition  —  to  be  an  orator  :  how  with  pebbles  in  his  mouth 
he  spoke  against  boisterous  sea-waves ;  how  he  shut  himself 
up  in  a  grotto  to  work,  shaving  one  side  of  his  head  to  pre- 
vent his  yielding  to  the  desire  for  human  company ;  how  he 
copied  all  Thucydides  eight  times ;  how  he  was  laughed  at  by 
the  Assembly  on  his  first  appearance,  but  was  consoled  by  an 
old  man,  who,  remembering  Pericles,  said  Demosthenes  re- 
minded him  of  the  great  Olympian,  and  was  encouraged  by 
an  actor  who  found  him  moping  about  the  Piraeus  and  who 
offered  to  give  him  lessons  in  elocution.  These  may  be  only 
pretty  tales ;  but  the  fact  is  that  physically  he  was  greatly 
handicapped  for  the  career  of  an  orator.  A  delicate  and 
sickly  child  of  studious  bent,  he  was  sensitive  and  perhaps 
morbid,  having  no  part  in  ordinary  physical  training ;  retir- 
ing, doubtless  shy  of  the  comradeship  of  boys,  and  keep- 
ing at  home  with  his  mother  and  younger  sister,  he  grew 
up  spare  and  rather  delicate  in  frame,  and  was  never  in  robust 
health.  He  must  have  had  some  sort  of  impediment  of  speech 
difficult  to  overcome.  The  term  "water-drinker,"  applied 
to  him  by  Aeschines,  would  suggest  that  he  had  to  be  careful 
of  his  diet ;  and  the  reproach  of  Aeschines,  that  he  had  never 
been  a  sportsman,  certainly  indicates  that  he  was  not  athletic, 
and  may  imply  neglect  of  exercise.  At  any  rate  he  was  in- 
ferior in  physique  and  voice  and  ready  speech  to  the  stalwart 
and  spontaneously  eloquent  Aeschines.  But  he  had  genius, 
and  every  difficulty  yielded  to  that. 

He  may  not  have  copied  Thucydides  eight  times,  but  it 
is  certain  that  he  had  been  nourished  by  the  study  and 
moulded  by  the  spirit  of  that  philosophic  historian.  "  He 
borrowed  from  him,"  says  Dionysius,  "his  rapid  movement, 
his  terseness,  his  intensity,  his  sting."  He  may  not  have  been 
actually   a   pupil   of   Isaeus,  but  the  influence    of    Isaeus 


ORATORY  203 

was  direct  and  strong.  Another  of  his  literary  masters  was 
certainly  Isocrates.  In  matters  of  form  —  periodic  sentence- 
structure,  avoidance  of  hiatus,  euphonic  arrangement  — ■ 
Demosthenes  learned  much  from  the  great  rhetorician ;  but 
in  the  application  of  all  that  he  learned  his  genius  taught  him 
to  find  a  happy  mean.  The  tradition  that  he  was  Plato's 
pupil,  which  has  little  evidence  to  support  it,  is  perhaps  only 
another  instance  of  the  perpetual  attempt  to  associate  great 
names  in  the  relation  of  master  and  pupil.  Cicero  says  that 
he  read  Plato  studiously,  even  heard  him,  and  had  so  stated 
in  a  letter.!  Plutarch  makes  the  same  statement,  on  the 
authority  of  Hermippus,  adding  that  he  was  much  benefited 
in  style  by  the  lessons  learned  from  Plato.^  But  as  to  direct 
indebtedness  modern  scholars  are  divided. 

Certainly  from  both  Plato  and  Isocrates  he  might  have 
learned  that  the  principles  of  ethics  apply  to  states  as  well  as 
individuals ;  that  justice  is  binding  on  nations  as  well  as  on 
their  citizens,  even  more  binding  on  the  former  "by  reason 
of  their  immortality."  "Beware,"  he  urged,  "of  exhibit- 
ing as  a  nation  conduct  which  you  would  shrink  from  as 
individuals."^  "It  is  not  possible,  Athenians,"  he  says 
again,  "it  is  not  possible  to  found  a  solid  power  upon  op- 
pression, perjury,  and  falsehood.  Such  an  empire  may  en- 
dure for  the  moment  or  for  the  hour ;  it  may  perhaps  blossom 
with  the  rich  promise  of  hope,  but  time  finds  it  out,  and  it 
drops  away  of  itself.  As  in  a  house,  a  vessel,  or  any  similar 
structure,  the  foundations  should  above  all  be  strong,  so 
should  the  principles  and  ground-work  of  conduct  rest  upon 
truth  and  justice."  ^  By  both  the  rhetorician  and  the  phil- 
osopher he  would  be  strengthened  in  the  conviction  that  the 
dignity  of  eloquence  must  be  enhanced  by  giving  it  a  moral 
content.  According  to  Demosthenes  the  statesman  must 
show  a  fearless  sincerity  and  speak  the  truth  at  all  costs ;  he 

»  Brut.,  31,  121.  »  Plut.  Demosth.  5. 

»  Contra  Lept.  136.  *  Olynth.  ii.  10. 


204  GREEK  LITERATURE 

must  have  a  profound  sense  of  responsibility;  good  inten- 
tions are  not  enough,  a  statesman  must  know  what  can  be 
done  when  he  advises  the  people  —  and  all  that  he  might 
have  learned  from  the  great  Pericles  as  Thucydides  represents 
him. 

Demosthenes'  first  work,  after  the  suit  against  his  guard- 
ians, was  writing  speeches  for  the  law-courts,  the  earliest  of 
them  in  private  or  civil  cases  —  mostly  for  others  to  speak  — 
of  which  some  nine  or  ten  genuine  ones  are  extant ;  but  all  that 
was,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  only  a  preparation  for 
public  life.  His  greatest  speeches  in  political  trials  {against 
Androtion,  agamst  Leptines,  against  Denwcrates,  against  Aristo- 
crotes),  are  still  more  distinctly  preludes  to  his  political  career. 
From  his  first  close  contact  with  public  affairs  in  355  b.c. 
to  his  death  in  322  everything  is  grouped  around  his  de- 
fense of  Athens  against  the  encroachments  of  Macedon.  That 
is  what  the  world  knows  him  by.  Some  eighteen  extant 
speeches  —  deliberative  or  forensic  —  belong  to  this  period. 

Demosthenes'  speeches  conform  to  the  general  Greek  rules 
of  arrangement.  All  have  an  exordium,  narrative  or  state- 
ment of  the  case,  argument,  and  peroration.  But  he  is 
"studiously  irregular  ;  narrative,  refutation,  and  proof  are 
blended  or  displaced  according  to  the  requirements  of  the 
case."  Here  will  be  found  directness  of  aim,  a  noble  sincerity, 
moral  elevation,  every  proof  of  minute  and  incessant  diligence, 
close  grappling  with  detail;  further  "a  dramatic  animation 
of  manner,  a  quick  interchange  of  question  and  answer,  a 
pressing  vehemence,  sudden  surprises,  and  novel  turns  of 
thought  or  phrase,  an  incisive  irony."  One  especially  praise- 
worthy peculiarity  of  his  style  Lord  Brougham  notes  :  ''Not 
even  in  the  beauty  of  collocation  and  harmony  of  rhythm  is 
the  vast  superiority  of  the  chaste,  vigorous,  and  manly  style 
of  the  Greek  orators  and  writers  more  conspicuous  than  in  the 
abstinent  use  of  their  prodigious  faculties  of  expression.  .  .  . 
Mark,  I  do  beseech  you,  the  severe  simplicity,  the  subdued 


ORATORY  205 

tone  of  the  diction,  in  the  most  touching  parts  of  the  old  man 
eloquent's  loftiest  passages.  In  the  oath  when  he  comes  to 
the  burial-place  where  they  repose  by  whom  he  is  swearing, 
if  ever  a  grand  epithet  were  allowable,  it  is  here  —  yet  the 
only  one  he  applies  is  aya^ous."  i 

Demosthenes  has  pathos,  but  it  is  "austere  and  Thucydi- 
dean  in  its  reserve."  He  has  little  humor,  and  is  not  jocose 
or  witty.  "No  one  ever  laughs  at  Demosthenes'  jokes  except 
Ctesiphon,"  sneered  Aeschines.  He  is  always  serious;  if  he 
has  a  fault,  it  is  in  this.  Yet  surely  if  a  man  ever  had  cause 
to  be  serious,  it  was  Demosthenes.  "Complete,  but  helpless 
prescience"  —  that  characterizes  Demosthenes.  He  clearly 
foresaw  all  that  was  coming,  yet  could  not  avert  it.  All  that 
is  in  the  face  of  the  statue  of  the  Vatican,  a  face  that  has 
always  haunted  me  more  than  any  other  ever  chiselled  in 
marble.  His  was  the  voice  of  a  lost  cause  that  was  right  and 
of  supreme  importance,  not  to  Athens  only,  but  to  the  whole 
civilized  world  and  to  all  coming  ages. 

The  public  career  of  Demosthenes  may  be  divided  into  the 
period  before  and  the  period  after  the  battle  of  Chaeronea. 
But  there  was  something  more  and  deeper  than  ordinary 
patriotism  in  his  opposition  to  the  encroachments  of  Mace- 
don.  The  policy  which  led  up  to  and  ended  in  Chaeronea 
was  simply  the  culmination  of  Demosthenes'  life-purpose.  "  It 
is  a  mistake,"  says  Professor  Butcher,^  "to  think  of  him  solely 
as  the  author  of  Philippics,  or  to  allow  the  main  episode  to  ob- 
scure the  life.  It  was  not  the  struggle  with  Macedon  that  gave 
a  bent  and  purpose  to  his  thoughts.  From  the  outset  it  was 
his  aim  to  revive  public  spirit  in  Athens.  .  .  .  He  had  studied 
the  history  of  Athens  and  gathered  from  it  all  that  was  no- 
blest in  her  past,  uniting  the  elements  in  an  ideal  portrait, 
which  became  to  him  henceforth  a  power  that  moved  his  im- 
agination and  controlled  his  reason.     This  portrait  of  national 

•  Inaugurnl  Discourse  (Speeches,  vol.  iii.  p.  87). 

*  Demosthenes,  p.  140. 


206  GREEK  LITERATURE 

character  he  set  before  his  countrymen  as  an  object  of  loving 
imitation.  Athens  must  identify  herself  with  her  liest  mo- 
ments and  be  made  to  feel  that  she  was  never  more  truly  her- 
self than  when  at  her  grandest."  In  all  that  he  was  simply  fol- 
lowing the  admonition  of  the  great  Pericles.  "  Fix  your  eyes," 
says  the  elder  statesman,  "  upon  the  greatness  of  Athens  until 
you  become  filled  with  the  love  of  her,  and  in  the  presence  of 
the  spectacle  of  her  glory  reflect  that  this  empire  has  been  ac- 
quired by  men  who  knew  their  duty  and  dared  to  do  it." 

In  his  early  career  he  was,  naturally,  simply  an  Athenian, 
perhaps  not  seeing  far  beyond  Attic  borders.  But  after 
Philip's  capture  of  Olj'^nthus  "the  Athenian  was  sunk  in  the 
Hellene."  His  prophetic  spirit  had  moved  on  "from  the 
menaced  independence  of  Athens  to  the  vision  of  a  death- 
struggle  between  barbarism  and  Hellenism,  between  lawless 
aggression  on  the  one  side  and  dignified  freedom  on  the 
other."  In  such  a  struggle  Athens  was  bound  to  be  the 
champion  of  Greece ;  her  whole  past  history  pledged  her  to 
it.  "Communities,  like  individuals,"  he  said,  "should  ever 
strive  to  mould  their  futures  by  the  noblest  chapters  of  their 
past."  ^  Plutarch  says  the  Stoic  Panaetius  found  that  "the 
principle  which  appears  in  the  greater  number  of  the  speeches 
of  Demosthenes  is  that  the  honorable  (to  KaXov)  is  to  be  chosen 
for  its  own  sake."  This  spirit  was  the  glory  of  Athens,  and  to 
preserve  it  was  a  higher  duty  than  self-preservation ;  it  was 
the  proud  distinction  of  Athens  that  there  had  been  crises  in 
her  history  when  she  staked  her  very  existence.  It  was  in 
recalling  such  crises  that  he  rose  to  the  moral  height  of  the 
great  oath.  The  statesman  is  responsible  for  prudent  ad- 
vice ;  the  issues  of  events  are  with  the  gods.  Had  he  mis- 
advised Athens,  had  she  made  a  mistake  in  opposing  Philip  ? 
"I  say  that  if  the  event  had  been  manifest  to  the  whole  world 
beforehand,  if  all  men  had  been  fully  aware  of  it,  if  you, 
Aeschines,  who  never  opened  your  lips,  had  been  never  so  loud 

>  De  Cor.  §  95. 


ORATORY  207 

or  shrill  in  prophecy  or  in  protest,  not  even  then  ought  Athens 
to  have  forsaken  this  course,  if  Athens  had  any  regard  for  her 
glory  or  her  past  or  for  the  ages  to  come.  Now,  of  course, 
she  seems  to  have  failed ;  but  failure  is  for  all  when  Heaven 
so  decrees.  .  .  .  But  never,  Athenians,  never  can  it  be  said 
that  you  erred  when  you  took  upon  you  that  peril  for  the 
freedom  and  safety  of  all !  No,  by  our  fathers  who  met 
the  danger  at  Marathon ;  no,  by  our  fathers  who  stood  in 
the  ranks  at  Plataea ;  no,  by  our  fathers  who  did  battle  on  the 
waters  of  Salamis  and  Artemisium  ;  no,  by  all  the  brave  who 
sleep  in  tombs  at  which  their  country  paid  those  last  honors 
which  she  had  awarded,  Aeschines,  to  all  of  them  alike,  not 
alone  to  the  successful  or  the  victorious.  And  her  award  was 
just.  The  part  of  brave  men  had  been  done  by  all.  The 
fortune  experienced  by  the  individual  among  them  had  been 
allotted  by  a  power  above  man." 

"Two  thousand  years  have  challenged,"  says  Jebb,  "a 
tradition  which  lives  and  will  always  live,  wherever  there  is 
left  a  sense  for  the  grandest  music  which  an  exquisite  lan- 
guage could  yield  to  a  sublime  enthusiasm  —  that  when 
Demosthenes  ceased,  those  who  came  from  all  parts  of  Greece 
to  hear,  that  day,  the  epitaph  of  the  freedom  which  they  had 
lost,  and  a  defense  of  the  honor  which  they  could  still  leave  to 
their  children,  had  listened  to  the  masterpiece  of  the  old 
world's  oratory,  perhaps  to  the  supreme  achievement  of 
human  eloquence."  "At  the  head  of  all  the  mighty  masters 
of  speech,"  says  Lord  Brougham,  "the  adoration  of  ages  has 
consecrated  his  place ;  and  the  loss  of  the  noble  instrument 
with  which  he  forged  and  launched  his  thunders  is  sure  to 
maintain  it  unapproachable  forever." 

As  I  have  read  or  reread  the  Greek  orators  in  the  past  few 
months  the  question  has  often  occurred  to  me :  How  much  is  here 
offered  that  is  indispensable  to  people  of  culture  who  are  not 
Greek  scholars  ?  Antiphon,  Isaeus,  and  Lycurgus,  Greek  schol- 
ars must  know,  in  order  to  have  a  fair  understanding  of  the  de- 


208  GREEK  LITERATURE 

velopraent  of  Greek  oratory,  including  legal  procedure.  Anti- 
phon  has  a  further  claim,  as  one  who  was  admired  by  and  who 
much  influenced  Thucydides.  Isaeus '  relation  to  Demosthe- 
nes gives  him,  too,  a  valid  claim  on  our  attention.  Lycurgus, 
pupil  of  Isocrates  and  financial  statesman,  with  his  single  ex- 
tant speech,  helps  to  illustrate  the  maturity  of  civil  eloquence. 
But  the  man  of  culture  who  reads  for  the  sake  of  literature 
might  perhaps  neglect  these,  even  if  he  could  still  read  Greek. 
As  to  Lysias  it  is  different.  Not  a  great  orator,  but  a  con- 
summate speech-writer  and  literary  artist,  he  merits  atten- 
tion from  a  wider  circle  than  Greek  scholars  —  from  all 
would-be  public  speakers  who  wish  to  acquire  the  difficult 
art  of  stating  a  case  and  of  saying  things  simply,  directly, 
and  felicitously.  Isocrates,  too,  deserves  the  study  of  public 
speakers,  and  of  all  who,  like  Walter  Pater,  wish  to  achieve 
an  elaborate  style  in  writing.  A  modern  will  perhaps  tire 
of  him  sooner  than  of  Lysias ;  but  he  is  not  for  that  reason  to 
be  neglected.  If  the  orations  of  Hyperides  were  preserved 
in  fairly  good  form,  he  would  demand  attention  as  much  as 
Lysias,  and  would  be  more  eagerly  read.  But  Demosthenes 
—  the  most  perfect  orations  of  Demosthenes,  e.g.,  the  Third 
Philippic,  the  Chersonese  speech,  and  above  all  the  De  Corona, 
these  are  in  Greek  oratory  of  a  class  apart.  They  belong  to 
the  great  literary  creations  of  the  world.  Taken  as  a  whole, 
and  especially  in  the  great  passages  that  every  one  knows, 
they  make  the  same  impression  as  the  Agamemnon  and  Pro- 
metheus of  Aeschylus,  the  Antigone,  Oedipus  Rex,  Oedipus  at 
Colonus,  and  Ajax  of  Sophocles,  as  Thucydides,  much  of 
Plato,  the  Danae  of  Simonides,  certain  odes  of  Pindar,  and 
Homer.  "Such  sermons  feed  me,"  an  old  friend  used  some- 
times to  say  to  me.  Demosthenes's  greatest  passages  feed 
the  spirit  and  are  tonic  to  the  higher  nature.  Such  is  the 
thrill  the  classic  masterpieces  can  still  give. 

Charles  Forster  Smith. 


PHILOSOPHY 

It  has  long  been  customary  to  begin  the  history  of  philos- 
ophy with  Thales  of  Miletus.  Tradition  places  his  birth 
in  640  B.C.,  and  allows  him  the  ripe  age  of  ninety  years. 
There  were  doubtless  philosophers  before  him,  but  they  have 
been  forgotten  so  completely  that  Thales  stands  out  in  the 
imagination  of  many  historians  as  a  wonder  in  need  of  ex- 
planation, and  has  furnished  the  stimulus  for  much  discourse 
about  the  origin  of  philosophy.  His  preeminence  seems  to 
rest,  however,  mainly  upon  a  casual  statement  of  Aristotle, 
who  named  Thales  as  the  first  of  those  who  looked  for  the 
beginnings  of  things  in  water,  air,  or  fire.  There  is  consider- 
able advantage  in  being  named  first  by  an  authority.  If 
you  were  not  first  before,  you  may  be  first  forever  after.  It 
is  the  past,  not  as  it  was,  but  as  it  is  recovered  in  the  imagina- 
tions of  men,  that  makes  history.  So  if  you  ask  the  cosmos, 
the  Greeks  did  not  originate  philosophy ;  but  if  you  ask 
tradition,  they  did.  Their  originality  is  defined  by  the  fact 
that  they  were  so  long  believed  to  be  original.  If  we  knew 
their  predecessors,  that  would  help  us  to  understand  the 
Greeks  and  might  alter  their  future  reputation ;  but  it  could 
not  alter  the  fact  that  for  twenty-five  centuries  they  have 
been  the  originators  for  the  Western  world  of  that  peculiar 
kind  of  curiosity  which  we  call  philosophy.  The  course  of 
events  helped  them  wonderfully,  but  that  was  a  character- 
istic of  the  course  of  events,  the  bare  fact  of  the  Greek  habit 
of  mind  enduring  amid  vicissitude.  We  may  therefore  claim, 
using  the  words  of  a  favorite  Greek  distinction,  that  while 
philosophy  did  not  begin  with  the  Greeks  in  the  order  of  na- 
ture, it  does  begin  with  them  in  the  order  of  ideas.  First 
p  209 


210  GREEK  LITERATURE 

they  were  not,  but  first  they  are.  They  achieved  a  distinc- 
tion which  nature  had  denied  them. 

Thales  was  their  first  philosopher.  No  undoubted  word 
of  his  remains  among  the  Hterary  fragments  of  his  time.  He 
was  a  dim  figure  when  men  began  to  speak  of  him,  yet  you 
could  paint  his  picture  as  readily  as  if  he  sat  for  your  brush. 
With  a  shrewdness  surpassing  that  of  the  Ionian  farmers, 
he  worked  up  a  corner  in  the  olive  market.  As  an  engineer 
he  changed  the  course  of  a  river  and  shaped  a  highway.  He 
had  a  great  reputation  for  political  skill.  Like  all  true 
philosophers,  he  was  absent-minded,  to  the  delight  of  the 
milkmaid  who  saw  him  fall  into  a  pit  while  looking  at  the 
sky.  He  foretold  gin  eclipse  of  the  sun,  and  thus  provided 
a  sidereal  date  for  historians.  He  wrestled  with  the  calen- 
dar, observing  the  progress  of  the  seasons,  the  yearly  march 
of  the  sun,  the  summer  and  the  winter  solstice,  the  vernal 
and  the  autumnal  equinox.  By  the  aid  of  geometry  he  meas- 
ured the  distance  of  ships  at  sea,  and  determined  the  height 
of  the  pyramids  from  their  own  shadows.  He  attempted  to 
explain  the  inundations  of  the  Nile.  He  made  the  first  re- 
corded observation  on  electricity.  And  with  creative  imag- 
ination, suspicious  of  the  permanency  of  things,  he  saw  the 
earth  rising  to  the  surface  of  a  primitive  ocean,  sustained  and 
fed  by  its  waters  so  that  it  blossomed  and  lived.  From  water 
it  came  and  into  water  it  would  again  disappear;  when 
thoroughly  dried  by  the  heat  of  the  sun,  which  process  at 
times  made  it  crack  and  quake,  it  would  once  more  sink  to 
be  moistened"  and  refreshed  anew.  Upon  his  tomb,  we  are 
told,  the  foll&wing  inscription  was  written :   — 

You  see  this  tomb  is  small ;  but  recollect 
The  fame  of  Thales  reaches  to  the  skies. 

Such  is  the  Thales  of  history.  Would  he  recognize  his  por- 
trait? Probably  not,  but  it  is  the  privilege  of  the  great  to 
be  painted. 


PHILOSOPHY  211 

Thales  is  typical  of  the  half  of  Greek  philosophy  if  we  have 
in  mind  its  dominant  interests,  for  the  Greeks  cared  very 
much  about  two  things  —  the  order  of  nature  and  the  excel- 
lence of  man.  He  was  followed  by  a  succession  of  eminent 
men  to  whom  nature  was  ever  fresh  and  interesting,  and  who 
pictured  her  with  so  much  enthusiasm  that  at  times  they  fell 
to  singing.  It  is  worthy  of  note  that,  in  the  long  tradition 
about  them,  judgment  is  passed  not  only  upon  their  opin- 
ions, but  also  upon  their  style,  whether  they  told  of  nature  in 
rough  and  untutored  speech  or  with  the  accent  of  a  finer 
voice.  It  is  evident  that  they  admired  her.  Since  they 
regarded  her  whole-heartedly  as  furnishing  man's  abode 
wherein  he  stands  upright  and  looks  aloft  to  the  stars,  they 
did  not  charge  her  with  inadequacy  in  providing  and  sustain- 
ing vision.  She  was  self-contained.  The  hand  of  God  had  not 
shaped  her,  but  the  gods,  if  such  there  were,  lived  joyously 
and  superbly  in  her  pleasant  places  or  moved  darkly  in  her 
mysterious  regions.  Or  she  might  herself  be  divine,  embrac- 
ing somehow  the  principle  of  divinity  as  the  principle  of  her 
order  and  beauty,  or  as  the  perfect  type  of  being  whose  es- 
sential excellence  was  her  stimulus  to  productivity. 

Thus  Greek  philosophy,  addressing  itself  to  the  cosmos, 
was  natural  and  free.  It  sought  to  discover  the  world's 
order,  regarding  the  many  indications  of  that  order  without 
disparagement  or  suspicion.  It  could  distinguish  between 
opinions  which  are  hastily  formed  under  the  pressure  of  ex- 
perience, and  knowledge  which  is  illuminated  by  pains-tak- 
ing reflection.  But  it  did  not  conceive  itself  as  something 
different  from  science.  Or  we  should  rather  say,  perhaps, 
that  the  distinction  between  science  and  philosophy  is  one 
which  would  have  amused  the  Greeks  more  than  it  would 
have  enlightened  them.  Parmenides,  it  is  true,  thought  he 
had  found  that  short  road  to  truth  which  the  moderns  call 
philosophy,  a  road  which  runs,  as  ho  tells  us,  far  from  the 
boaton  track  of  men,  avoiding  such  commonplaces  as  night  and 


212  GREEK  LITERATURE 

day,  the  sun,  the  moon,  and  the  stars,  the  genesis  of  man,  Uving 
things,  and  the  spectacular  scenes  of  the  cosmic  play,  but 
leading  to  the  unshaken  heart  of  persuasive  truth,  to  the 
goddess  of  wisdom,  whither  the  seeker  may  be  carried  by 
vigorous  steeds  whose  breath  is  fire,  and  tended  by  radiant 
maidens  whose  seductions  are  wholly  syllogistic.  Thither 
coming  as  a  suppliant  before  the  fast-bound  doors  of 
truth's  most  distant  dwelling-place,  he  may  be  allowed  to 
enter  and  hear  high  discourse  of  being  and  non-being ;  and 
having  learned  that  only  being  can  be,  he  may  return  to 
the  beaten  track  of  men,  in  need  of  no  higher  information 
and  quite  sure  that  inquiry  into  the  natural  order  of 
events  is  a  little  undignified.  The  immediate  effect  of  the 
excursion  of  Parmenides  seems  to  have  been,  however,  to 
make  men  think  about  the  indestructibility  of  matter, 
and  not  to  drive  the  eager  horses  of  the  soul  around  the 
sphere  whose  centre  is  everj^vhere  in  general  but  nowhere 
in  particular.  Plato  immortalized  Parmenides  by  mak- 
ing a  dialogue  about  him  and  affording  scholars  a  rich 
opportunity  for  the  writing  of  explanatory  books ;  for  Par- 
menides was  too  great  a  figure  for  the  great  dramatist  of 
ideas  to  overlook.  Indeed  we  may  say  it  would  have  been 
a  pity  if  the  versatile  Greek  mind  could  not  have  produced 
at  least  one  modern  philosopher.  Let  us  therefore  set  Par- 
menides down  as  an  instance  of  that  versatility,  and  accord 
him  this  praise,  that  since  he  would  think  about  infinity, 
beginninglessness  and  endlessness,  spacelessness  and  time- 
lessness,  and  completeness  so  complete  that  its  incomplete- 
ness completed,  he  none  the  less  wrote  of  these  things  in 
hexameter. 

Before  Parmenides,  Anaximander,  a  fellow-toTVTisman  of 
Thales  and  his  pupil  according  to  tradition,  had  made  the 
perilous  venture  of  the  infinite.  But  he  beheld  it  as  the 
boundless  reaches  of  space,  diffused  through  which  was  a 
burning  and  steaming  mist  which  tended  to  condense  from 


PHILOSOPHY  213 

every  direction  toward  the  centre,  so  that  at  last  the  earth 
was  formed  there,  a  cyhndrical  mass,  self-poised,  in  need  of 
no  support.  Around  it  whirled  masses  of  clouds  through 
which  flamed  here  and  there  the  inclosed  fires  which  men  call 
the  sun  and  moon  and  stars.  Having  got  the  earth,  this  man 
went  on  to  conceive  life  as  originating  in  the  sea,  and  birds 
as  fishes  thrown  out  upon  the  land  to  change  their  fins  to 
wings.  And  it  seemed  incredible  to  him  that  man  had  no 
prehuman  history,  for  how  could  he  have  originated  as  a  hu- 
man infant  and  lived  through  his  long  infancy  in  the  cosmic 
struggle  without  parental  care  ?  Through  struggle  living 
beings,  he  thought,  attain  the  forms  they  have,  so  that  it  is 
only  natural  justice  that  at  last  all  should  return  once  more 
to  the  boundless  source  from  which  they  came,  in  order  that 
nothing  should  finally  triumph  in  another's  death.  Let  us 
remember  that  Anaximander  was  born  2521  years  ago. 

It  would  be  a  pleasure  to  go  on  from  such  beginnings  and 
tell  in  detail  the  story  of  the  Greek  cosmologists :  of  An- 
aximenes,  bending,  as  it  were,  before  the  great  cosmic  wind 
which  blows  the  earth  and  planets  through  space,  holds  the 
stars  nailed,  as  it  seems,  against  heaven's  dome,  and  by  its 
thickening  and  thinning  produces  mist,  rain,  hail,  and  snow, 
and,  banked  up  in  masses  on  the  horizon,  sends  back  the  sun's 
rays  so  reflected  as  to  stretch  a  bow  of  colors  over  the  earth  ; 
of  Heraclitus,  obscure  in  speech,  but  praising  clarity  of 
thought,  for  whom  this  cosmos,  made  neither  by  man  nor 
God,  was  and  is  and  will  be  fire  everlasting,  kindled  according 
to  measure  and,  quenched  according  to  measure,  who  sought 
in  the  universal  conflagration  the  divine  law  by  which  the 
ever-changing  things  of  the  world  are  steered,  the  hidden  har- 
mony which  to  the  mind  is  sweeter  than  any  sounded  music 
to  the  ear;  of  Empedocles  and  Anaxagoras,  wrestling  with 
the  new-found  notions, of  changeless  matter  and  contriving 
force,  the  former  finding>love  and  hate,  which  others,  in  fear 
of  being  anthropomorphic,  call  attraction  and  repulsion,  the 


214  GREEK  LITERATURE 

architects  of  nature,  shaping  her  in  an  upward  struggle 
through  many  haphazard,  grotesque,  and  hideous  forms  to 
those  shapes  which  now  please  the  eye ;  and  the  latter  find- 
ing intelligence  at  work  wherever  from  out  the  intricate  mix- 
ture of  primal  matter  anything  becomes  distinguished ;  and 
of  Democritus,  who  dissolved  matter  into  space,  so  that  matter 
became  atomic  in  structure  and  possessed  only  of  those  natural 
movements  which  he  conceived  to  belong  to  bodies  left  free, 
so  that  order  and  selection  arose  solely  from  the  interference 
of  material  particles,  until  space  was  filled  with  systems  of 
worlds,  and  man  followed  to  look  out  upon  it  all  and  laugh 
for  joy  because  the  world  could  be  such  a  merry  dance  and  so 
beautiful,  a  fit  place  for  the  sajdngs  of  Democritus,  which 
men  have  called  golden,  as  "Strength  of  body  is  nobility 
in  beasts  of  burden  and  strength  of  character  is  nobility  in 
man."  It  would  be  a  pleasure  indeed  to  tell  the  story,  but 
it  would  be  only  a  part  of  Greek  philosophy,  the  part  which 
subsequent  generations  who  knew  not  how  to  find  nature  in- 
spiring neglected  and  preserved  only  by  the  way.  The  work 
of  scholars  has  rescued  many  a  fragment.  We  piece  them 
together  and,  in  our  amazement  at  the  resulting  picture, 
wonder  if  it  can  possibly  be  correct.  It  may  not  be,  but  the 
greater  wonder  is  that  the  pieces  can  make  such  a  picture. 

To  speak  of  the  Greek  cosmologies  as  pictures  is  perhaps 
an  appropriate  figure.  They  look  at  this  distance  more  like 
vast  impressionistic  sketches  of  the  cosmos  than  the  laborious 
study  of  definite  and  isolated  natural  processes.  The  Greeks 
lacked  the  instruments  of  experiment  and  precision  which 
we  possess.  They  seem  to  have  used  color  lavishly  and  line 
little.  They  apparently  liked  sweep  and  disliked  detail.  If 
we  knew  more  about  them  —  and  the  fragments  of  Empedo- 
cles  contain  many  startling  and  minute  observations  —  we 
might  think  differently  about  them.  But  we  know  them  only 
through  tradition.  That  tradition  leaves  them  as  yet  un- 
surpassed in  fertile  conceptions  about  the  order  of  nature, 


PHILOSOPHY  215 

but  leaves  unchallenged  for  later  ages  the  triumphs  of  ex- 
perimental research.  In  thinking  of  these  Greek  pictures 
painted  with  a  fine  imagination,  with  a  spontaneous  and  free 
love  of  natural  things,  and  thinking  also  how  men  later  had 
to  recover  nature  through  a  bitter  struggle,  through  the 
social  ostracism  of  many  a  scholar,  through  imprisonment, 
torture,  and  even  death,  against  the  charge  of  infidelity  and 
of  corrupting  all  that  is  ennobling  in  human  life,  one  feels 
that  there  has  been  a  tragedy  in  the  life  of  thought.  Athens, 
it  is  true,  loved  not  the  cosmologist.  She  persecuted  Anax- 
agoras  because  he  said  that  the  sun  was  a  rock  on  fire,  and 
Plato  pictures  Socrates  disgusted  with  his  book;  but  no 
scholar  is  recorded  as  wishing  to  destroy  him  or  his  writings. 
Yes,  Athens  loved  not  the  cosmologist.  She  loved  man 
—  not,  however,  man  in  general,  but  Athenians  first  and 
other  Greeks  when  necessary.  Yet  she  loved  so  well  that 
her  admiration  begot  conceptions  universal  in  their  vision, 
even  if  she  denied  their  application  to  slaves  and  barbarians. 
The  philosophy  of  Athens  is  humanistic  through  and  through. 
Even  Aristotle,  who  performed  the  astonishing  task  of  bring- 
ing all  Greek  philosophy  together  in  one  imposing  system, 
never  forgets  the  supreme  emphasis  on  man.  Many  his- 
torians who  can  conceive  a  given  philosophy  only  as  somehow 
the  outcome  of  a  preceding  philosophy  have  seen  in  Socrates, 
Plato,  and  Aristotle  a  reaction  against  Democritus  and  his 
predecessors,  against  a  demoralized  situation  in  life  and 
thought  which  the  cosmologists  had  created.  But  the  dates 
alone  make  such  a  conception  highly  improbable.  Democ- 
ritus and  his  predecessors,  with  very  few  exceptions,  lived 
and  died  in  the  colonies  of  Greece.  Attic  philosophy  was 
city-born  and  city-bred.  It  grew  out  of  society,  politics, 
and  education,  and  not  out  of  contemplation  of  the  stars  or 
of  the  order  of  nature.  It  was  philosophy  taking  a  fresh 
start  because  human  relations  had  become  acute  and  interest- 
ing, not  because  speculations  about  nature  had  produced 


216  GREEK  LITERATURE 

chaos.  Attic  philosophy  is  thus  in  its  beginning  not  a  de- 
velopment of  Greek  philosophy,  an  evolution  out  of  preceding 
systems.  Its  roots  are  elsewhere,  in  the  city  streets,  by  the 
dinner-table,  in  the  theatre,  the  courts,  the  market-place. 
It  is  of  a  city  grown  conscious  that  she  has  beaten  the  Per- 
sian and  become  mistress  of  her  own  destiny. 

It  was  a  townsman  and  contemporary  of  Democritus,  the 
Sophist  Protagoras,  who  went  to  Athens  and  said,  "  Man 
is  the  measure  of  all  things."  He  probably  did  not  intend 
to  condense  a  theory  of  knowledge  into  an  epigram  or  to 
invite  men  to  embrace  a  purely  individualistic  standard  of 
morals.  The  remark  was  bold,  but  not  cryptic.  It  indicated 
that  since  the  measure  of  things  is  taken  by  man,  the  methods 
and  standards  of  measurement  should  be  the  chief  objects  of 
human  interest  and  the  important  factors  in  education.  He 
seems  indeed  to  have  been  about  the  first  professional  edu- 
cator, and  consequently  deserves  much  praise  and  much 
blame.  He  did  not  propose  to  make  young  men  competent 
artisans,  tradesmen,  or  statesmen,  but  he  proposed  to  make 
them  good,  to  improve  their  manners,  address,  and  con- 
versation, to  perfect  their  measuring  ability,  to  make  them 
wise  without  compelling  them  to  master  anything  but 
themselves.  He  regarded  all  this  as  very  important,  and 
called  the  teaching  of  it  the  teaching  of  virtue,  just  as  we 
call  it  the  giving  of  a  liberal  education.  He  was  very 
much  admired,  and  parents  paid  him  large  sums  for 
his  services.  He  had  many  imitators.  Young  men  in 
those  days  apparently  desired  to  be  made  virtuous,  and  there 
was  profit  for  the  makers.  So  the  Sophists  prospered. 
Their  prosperity,  however,  led  them  into  corruption,  so  that 
to-day  they  are  seldom  regarded  as  the  proper  model  for 
teachers.  Yet  were  Protagoras  alive,  I  doubt  not  that  he 
would  be  the  leading  professor  of  philosophy  in  the  world. 

Historians  have  paid  too  much  attention  to  the  character 
of  the  Sophists  and  too  little  to  their  existence.     But  their 


PHILOSOPHY  217 

existence  was  the  significant  thing.  It  points  to  the  fact 
that  the  Greeks  wanted  to  be  the  makers,  not  only  of  cos- 
mologies or  of  beautiful  buildings  and  statues  or  of  immor- 
tal verses,  but  also  of  superior  men.  It  points  to  a  social 
eagerness  for  excellence.  But  there  is  considerable  danger 
in  teaching  young  men  after  the  manner  of  Protagoras,  the 
danger  of  cleverness  and  superficiality,  of  self-assurance 
without  clarity  of  mind,  of  producing  virtuosity  instead  of 
virtue.  Socrates  felt  this  danger  keenly.  He  had  a  strange 
affection  for  young  men,  a  curious  combination  of  the  father, 
the  mother,  and  the  sweetheart.  He  worried  about  their 
destinies,  and  he  liked  simply  to  look  at  them  and  have  them 
near.  To  him  there  was  nothing  more  attractive  than  beau- 
tiful youths  with  eager  minds.  It  is  just  because  they  have 
minds  that  they  are  in  danger  of  missing  something,  of  run- 
ning off  on  the  wrong  track,  for  the  mind  it  is  which  makes 
the  estimate  of  life.  That  the  estimate  is  made  in  ignorance 
Socrates  knew.  He  had  tried  the  fact  out  by  asking  others 
and  by  searching  his  own  soul.  He  was  conscious  that  he 
had  no  knowledge  to  impart,  but  he  could  not  leave  young 
men,  for  he  loved  them  too  well.  So  he  bound  them  to  him 
by  making  them  suspicious  of  the  traditional  sources  of 
knowledge  and  by  stimulating  in  them  a  restless  intellectual 
hunger.  Because  it  was  he  who  created  the  appetite,  they 
looked  to  him  for  its  satisfaction,  and  he  kept  them  busy 
making  it  keener.  They  always  came  so  near  the  truth  that 
they  would  surely  have  it  the  next  time.  They  thus  became 
more  dependent  on  him  than  on  the  truth  itself.  Plato's 
Phaedo  may  not  be  history,  but  it  is  dramatically  true. 
Socrates  was  about  to  die.  His  death  meant  the  greatest 
possible  loss.  Was  there  any  compensation?  There  might 
be  if  the  soul  could  not  die,  if  Socrates  were  going  only  on  a 
journey,  and  death  did  not  mean  to  be  utterlj''  gone.  So  they 
talk  about  immortality  and  try  hard  to  be  convinced.  But 
Socrates  is  cautious.     He  will  not  be  too  sure.     His  great 


218  GREEK   LITERATURE 

hold  on  them  has  been  to  keep  them  thinking,  yet  he  would 
now  make  them  sure  if  he  could,  and  certainly  one  can  be 
sure  of  being  ready  for  the  truth  when  found.  But  the  cup 
of  hemlock  is  too  strong  an  argument.  They  go  away  from 
that  last  scene  broken  men,  suffering  an  irreparable  loss. 
There  was  no  Socratic  philosophy,  and  that  is  why  all  efforts 
to  state  it  fail.  There  was  only  a  man  who  could  never  be 
forgotten. 

Among  the  followers  of  Socrates  was  a  youth  named 
Aristocles.  Men  dubbed  him  Plato  for  two  good  reasons, 
his  breadth  of  back  and  his  breadth  of  mind.  He  was  born 
appropriately  upon  Apollo's  birthday.  He  tried,  however, 
to  escape  his  manifest  destiny  by  turning  philosopher,  but 
never  quite  succeeded,  unless  we  are  paradoxical  enough  to 
see  in  him  philosophy's  greatest  success.  There  is  a  story 
that  he  wrote  plays  before  he  met  Socrates,  but  after  that 
meeting  burned  them,  and  the  strange  conclusion  has  been 
drawn  that  he  made  plays  no  longer.  To  explain,  however, 
whj^  his  writings  are  dialogues,  ingenious  scholars  have  sup- 
posed that  he  was  in  the  habit  of  asking  questions  of  his  pupils 
and  reproduced  his  practice  in  literary  form.  In  justifica- 
tion of  their  opinion  it  should  be  stated  that  their  own  method 
of  teaching  was  probably  different.  It  is  far  saner,  if  we  are 
going  to  use  our  imagination  in  the  matter,  to  suppose  that 
for  the  young  Plato  the  spectacle  of  Socrates,  the  ugly  and 
penniless  Sophist,  holding  the  youth  of  Athens  enraptured 
in  a  philosophical  argument  which  could  never  end,  but  must 
be  interrupted  by  the  intrusion  of  affairs,  was  a  spectacle 
more  dramatic  than  any  he  had  yet  conceived.  And  surely 
there  are  possibilities  enough  in  the  eager  search  for  truth 
on  some  pleasant  afternoon  with  congenial  friends,  when  one 
seems  to  have  all  the  time  there  is,  and  the  argument  has 
carried  us  far  away  from  the  worries  and  details  of  life  into  a 
clear  and  untroubled  atmosphere  where  the  prize  hovers,  the 
secret  our  souls  covet,  and  then,  just  as  we  are  about  to  grasp 


PHILOSOPHY  219 

it,  it  eludes  us,  or  life  intervenes  with  a  trivial  or  a  weighty 
call.  Plato's  philosophy  is  the  mind's  aspiration  thwarted 
by  circumstance  and  its  own  subtlety.  Its  literary  form  had 
to  be  dramatic. 

Committed  thus  to  the  dramatization  of  the  conflict  of 
ideas,  Plato  depicted  the  comic  and  tragic  in  the  life  of 
thought.  His  sweep  is  wide,  but  he  likes  best  the  themes 
distinctlj^  human.  He  makes  generals  discourse  on  courage. 
Sophists  on  wisdom,  rhetoricians  on  rhetoric,  psychologists 
on  the  soul,  friends  on  friendship,  politicians  on  politics,  the 
pious  on  piety,  and  it  is  usually  the  play  of  ideas  rather  than 
the  conclusion  which  absorbs  him.  So  if  we  look  for  a  sys- 
tem of  philosophy  in  Plato,  we  shall  probably  not  find  it ; 
but  if  we  look  for  none,  we  may  find  most  of  the  philosophies 
ever  written.  That  is  why  those  who  call  him  master  are 
so  often  unwilling  to  call  one  another  disciples,  and  there 
is  consequently  nothing  so  Platonic  as  the  spectacle  of  Pla- 
tonists  contending.  The  greatest  tribute  I  have  ever  heard 
paid  to  his  versatility  is  the  assertion  that  "all  that  is  good  in 
Aristotle  is  Platonic,  and  yet  Aristotle  thoroughly  misunder- 
stood his  master.  " 

It  is  impossible  in  one  lecture  on  the  whole  of  Greek  philos- 
ophy to  speak  of  Plato's  contributions.  It  might  be  suflS- 
cient  to  note  that  he  makes  philosophy  necessary  for  every 
one  who  reads  him,  and  that  he  has  produced  more  philos- 
ophers than  anybody  else.  But  I  should  not  leave  him 
without  some  expression  of  the  things  which  are  found  in 
him  perennially  significant.  I  turn  to  the  Republic.  It  is 
an  odd  city  which  Plato  would  have  us  build,  a  little  town 
secured  from  invasions  from  without,  with  the  people  told 
a  pleasant  mj^th  about  their  natural  capacities,  with  all  prop- 
erty in  the  hands  of  the  state,  with  women  the  equals  of  men 
in  all  but  strength  of  body,  with  a  scarcity  of  poets  because 
only  those  who  speak  the  truth  are  to  be  allowed,  with  every- 
body adjusted  to  his  proper  work,  with  no  families,  but  with 


220  GREEK  LITERATURE 

the  citizens  perpetuated  through  the  idylUc  mating  of  the 
choicest  youths  and  maidens,  with  no  opportunity  for  pastry- 
cooks and  consequently  none  for  physicians,  with  a  system 
of  education  adequate  to  keep  everybody  free  from  corrup- 
tion, and  with  my  colleagues  and  me  to  manage  it  all.  It  is 
an  odd  state,  providing  much  that  we  all  hope  for  and  daring 
much  which  in  later  years  many  have  gladly  approved. 
Plato  may  have  taken  it  literally,  but  I  doubt  it.  The  young 
men  he  kept  discussing  it  with  Socrates  all  day  long  made 
him  admit  it  was  impracticable,  and  that  it  could  exist  per- 
haps only  in  heaven ;  and  they  drove  him  at  last  to  tell  them 
a  story  to  divert  their  insistent  questions  and  send  them  away 
thinking  of  the  perfect  city  in  heaven  and  the  life  of  man 
on  earth.  The  story  is  itself  a  commentary  on  the  Republic. 
It  tells  how  a  man  named  Er  paid  a  visit  to  the  other  world 
and  returned  to  report  how  he  had  seen  the  souls  there  choose 
their  lot  for  their  next  pilgrimage  on  earth.  "He  who  had 
the  first  choice  drew  near  and  at  once  chose  the  greatest 
tyranny;  his  mind  having  been  darkened  by  folly  and 
sensuality,  he  did  not  well  consider  and  therefore  did  not 
see  at  first  that  he  was  fated  among  other  evils  to  devour 
his  own  children.  But  when  he  came  to  himself  and  saw 
what  was  in  his  lot,  he  began  to  beat  his  breast  and  lament 
over  his  choice.  Instead  of  blaming  himself  as  the  author  of 
his  calamity,  he  accused  chance  and  the  gods  and  everything 
rather  than  himself.  Now  he  was  one  of  those  who  came 
from  heaven,  and  in  a  former  life  had  dwelt  in  a  well-ordered 
state ;  but  his  virtue  was  a  matter  of  habit  only,  and  he  had 
no  philosophy.  And  this  was  more  often  the  fortune  of  those 
who  came  from  heaven,  because  they  had  no  experience  of 
life :  whereas  in  general  the  dwellers  upon  earth,  who  had 
seen  and  known  trouble,  were  not  in  a  hurry  to  choose."^ 
How  inconsistent,  we  exclaim,  to  put  his  city  in  heaven  as 
the  perfect  pattern  of  goodness  and  then  to  assert  that  those 

^  Jowett's  translation. 


PHILOSOPHY  221 

who  come  from  heaven  are  hasty,  rash,  and  tyrannous,  while 
those  who  have  experienced  the  troubles  of  earth  are  cautious 
and  sane  !  But  with  Plato  such  is  human  life  —  to  see  the 
glories  of  heaven  and  need  the  discipline  of  earth.  That,  I 
believe,  is  why  he  made  Socrates  the  hero  of  his  plaj's,  as  the 
man  who  suffered  and  the  man  who  saw.  It  is  no  wonder 
that  some  of  the  Church  Fathers  thought  that  Plato  must 
have  been  a  Christian,  or  that  his  philosophy  could  be  de- 
scribed in  words  borrowed  from  his  own  Phaedo  as  a  medita- 
tion on  death. 

There  is  that  in  Plato,  but  there  is  much  besides,  for  the 
vision  of  the  perfect  city  in  heaven  evokes  more  than  the 
baffled  cry  of  human  experience.  The  Republic  is  a  confi- 
dent summons  to  read  the  virtues  of  the  individual  in  the 
larger  letters  of  virtue  socially  conceived.  Plato  solves  too 
light-heartedly  the  civic  and  social  problems  with  which  men 
have  been  busy  ever  since  they  began  trying  to  live  together. 
His  thought  moves  confined  by  the  limited  boundaries  of  the 
Greek  city  state  and  the  traditional  and  aristocratic  classifi- 
cation of  its  citizens.  His  city  is  military,  not  economic  and 
industrial.  In  his  later  years  he  planned  to  tell  how  that 
city  would  conduct  itself  in  war,  as  if  in  such  conduct  its  su- 
preme excellence  would  be  disclosed.  Those  who  entertain 
the  ideal  of  a  successful  democracy  are  offended  by  his  pa- 
ternalism and  his  contempt  for  the  men  who  toil,  the  creatures 
whom  God  made  mostly  of  clay.  Yet  through  these  limita- 
tions of  time  and  place  and  circumstance  runs  the  conviction 
that  it  is  futile  to  place  any  great  confidence  in  individual 
virtue  unless  it  is  the  reflection  of  a  virtuous  social  order. 
For  man  is  the  maker  of  cities,  and  is  to  be  judged  by  the 
kind  of  city  he  makes.  The  types  of  government  and  the 
types  of  man  go  hand  in  hand.  Are  men  just,  courageous, 
temperate,  and  wise?  Look  to  their  city.  That  is  Plato's 
challenge  to  civilization,  a  challenge  which  knows  no  limita- 
tions of  time  or  place  or  circumstance. 


222  GREEK  LITERATURE 

There  is  a  similar  universality  in  Plato's  ideas  on  education. 
We  may  be  amused  at  students  who  try  to  master  astronomy 
while  they  neglect  the  stars.  We  may  doubt  that  mathemat- 
ics is  the  best  medicine  for  the  mind.  We  may  be  suspicious 
of  the  civic  eflficiency  of  philosophers  trained  principally  in 
dialectic.  Many  a  detail  may  look  absurd  if  we  take  it  seri- 
ously. What  Plato  desires  to  have  us  take  seriously,  how- 
ever, is  his  conviction  that  education  can  promote  civic 
virtue  only  as  by  some  means  or  other  it  succeeds  in  fixing 
attention  on  the  impersonal  and  the  general.  Nothing,  he 
urges,  is  clearly  understood  unless  it  is  understood  in  its  con- 
text and  seen  in  its  relations.  That  is  why  if  the  minds  of 
the  young  are  tied  to  the  isolated  and  detached,  no  proper 
estimate  of  anything  is  attained,  and  the  desires  and  emotions 
become  enslaved  to  the  immediate  and  the  temporary.  And 
that  is  why  philosophy  is  needed  in  education  and  should  be 
its  life,  insisting  everywhere  that  there  is  a  context  apart 
from  which  there  is  no  intelligent  reading  of  a  single  word  in 
the  book  of  nature  or  in  the  book  of  man.  To  know  is  to  get 
at  the  meaning  of  those  books,  to  find  out  what  ideas  they 
contain.     It  is  not  to  count  their  words  or  to  make  an  index. 

Plato's  theory  of  education  and  his  theory  of  ideas  are  the 
same  thing  under  different  names.  For  individual  things 
are  but  the  incitements  to  the  comprehension  of  what  they 
amount  to,  what  they  express  and  illustrate,  what  they  per- 
form, what  they  signify,  to  what  they  point.  Only  as  we 
thus  comprehend  them  can  we  tell  what  they  are.  Nothing 
else  suffices,  but  this  suffices  to  reveal  to  an  open  mind  a  hint, 
perhaps  the  vision,  of  the  pattern  which  their  meanings 
make.  It  is  a  wonderful  pattern,  Plato  would  have  us  be- 
lieve, for  which  no  fashion  of  human  speech  can  be  too  exalted ; 
for  when  seen  it  discloses  how  each  thing,  even  the  com- 
monest, is  an  indication  of  a  perfect  and  abiding  type,  and 
how  these  types  themselves  point  to  that  idea  of  good  "which 
is  the  cause  of  all  that  is  beautiful  and  right,  parent  in  the 


PHILOSOPHY  223 

visible  world  of  light  and  its  lord  the  sun,  and  in  the  world 
of  mind  the  sovereign  source  of  intelligence  and  truth." 

To  turn  from  Plato  to  Aristotle  is  to  turn  to  a  rather  tire- 
some mass  of  technical  terms,  labored  definitions  and  dis- 
tinctions, frequent  repetitions,  cross-references,  unfulfilled 
promises  of  more  on  the  same  subject,  and  the  absence,  ex- 
cept in  very  occasional  passages,  of  anything  like  literature. 
The  first  impression  one  is  apt  to  receive  is  that  here  is  a 
rather  crude  attempt  to  glorifj^  the  obvious.  We  are  told 
that  it  is  better  to  be  well  than  to  be  ill ;  therefore  the  best 
man  will  be  healthy.  It  is  better  to  be  rich  than  to  be  poor ; 
therefore  the  best  man  will  not  be  poor.  It  is  better  to  live 
to  a  ripe  age  than  to  die  in  infancy ;  therefore  the  best  man 
will  be  mature.  It  is  better  to  live  in  society  than  in  solitude ; 
therefore  the  best  man  will  be  a  citizen  and  have  intimate 
friends.  ISIen  are  distinguished  from  other  animals  by  pos- 
sessing reason ;  therefore  the  best  man  will  be  a  reasoner ; 
he  will  live  rationally  and  exercise  his  rational  faculty  for  the 
pleasure  of  it.  But  this  is  not  very  thrilling,  we  exclaim. 
Yet  it  is  very  sensible,  Aristotle  replies.  But  we  want  to  be 
enthusiastic.  That  is  just  the  trouble,  says  Aristotle;  too 
many  people  prefer  enthusiasm  to  sense.  And  we  look  out 
on  life  and  find  it  so,  and  realize  that  we  have  fallen  into  the 
hands  of  a  physician. 

But  with  Aristotle  as  a  whole  it  is  the  world's  case  that  is 
diagnosed  —  not  that  we  are  to  suppose  that  the  world  is  ill, 
but  that  it  is  the  business  of  philosophy  to  get  at  its  structure 
and  its  functions,  its  anatomy  and  its  physiology,  so  to  speak. 
For  the  world,  on  account  of  its  ceaseless  productivity,  is  not 
unlike  a  living  being.  What  it  is,  therefore,  what  it  does, 
how  it  does  it,  and  with  what  results,  are  the  kind  of  ques- 
tions which  it  is  profitable  to  ask.  If  they  could  be  truthfully 
answered,  the  answers  would  constitute  just  that  intellectual 
achievement  which  the  reason  of  man  so  much  desires  and 
which  seems  to  be  reason's  most  significant  enterprise. 


224  GREEK  LITERATURE 

For  that  enterprise,  however,  no  single  science  is  sufficient, 
because  nature  is  too  manifold  and  diverse.  Often  she  is 
wayward,  hiding  her  processes  from  the  inquisition  which 
would  force  her  into  unvarying  regularity.  Knowledge  must 
recognize,  therefore,  that  it  can  deal  only  with  the  general 
and  the  usual,  and  that  there  are  factors  irreducible  to  law. 
Yet  even  so,  it  must  also  recognize  that  in  the  field  of  the  gen- ' 
eral  and  the  usual  there  are  differences  of  aspect  and  of  opera- 
tion which  cannot  be  expressed  in  any  common  terms.  So 
we  find  in  Aristotle  a  system  of  sciences,  each  with  its  own 
special  field  assigned  and  with  its  relation  to  its  fellows  de- 
termined. Physics,  psychology,  anatomy,  physiology,  nat- 
ural history,  politics,  rhetoric,  ethics,  poetics,  mathematics, 
logic,  metaphysics,  sometimes  as  elaborate  treatises  and  some- 
times as  special  monographs  on  chosen  topics  —  we  find  them 
all,  the  great  and  almost  single  source  of  Europe's  informa- 
tion for  centuries.  Much  of  his  work  has  no  present  signifi- 
cance or  value,  but  much  of  it  still  remains  a  living  contribu- 
tion to  current  thought.  Would  you  write  on  rhetoric  or 
art,  on  psychology  or  ethics,  on  logic  or  metaphysics,  on  poli- 
tics or  the  constitution  of  states,  you  will  not  slight  the 
Stagirite  if  you  are  wise.  And  slighting  him  is  hardly  pos- 
sible, he  is  so  intricately  connected  with  the  whole  structure 
of  scholarship.  He  is  responsible  for  the  long  life  of  many  an 
error ;  he  has  ensnared  many  a  feeble  mind  by  affording  it  a 
terminology  which  could  be  made  a  substitute  for  thought  ; 
but,  taken  all  in  all,  he  is  one  of  the  intellectual  marvels  of 
history. 

Among  the  Aristotelian  writings,  the  misnamed  Meta- 
physics has  a  unique  place.  It  is,  like  the  other  sciences, 
restricted  in  its  scope,  inadequate  for  the  grasp  of  nature  in 
her  complexity.  Yet  it  has  a  universality  which  none  of 
these  possesses,  for  all  objects  of  all  thought  fall  within  its 
domain  if  we  will  conceive  them  stripped  of  those  special  and 
peculiar  characters  which  demand  separate  study  for  their 


PHILOSOPHY  225 

comprehension.     If  there  are  any  propositions  true  of  all 
things  in  spite  of  their  variety,  if  anything  can  be  said  of  na- 
ture which  is  applicable  to  her  as  nature  simply,  rather  than 
as  nature  qualified  and  diverse,  these  propositions  and  say- 
ings will  constitute  a  science  at  once  restricted  and  universal. 
Or  we  may  observe  that  since  only  a  system  of  sciences  is 
adequate  to  the  understanding  of  nature,  those  features  of 
nature  which  make  this  necessary  may  themselves  be  scru- 
tinized and  formulated.     Now  that  which  is  most  generally 
characteristic  of  things  is  motion,  but  motion  not  restricted 
to  movement  from  place  to  place.     It  comprises  such  pro- 
cesses as  growth,  decay,  and  qualitative  change,  so  that  with 
Aristotle  the  germination  of  a  seed  and  the  generation  of  a 
thought  are  as  much  motion  as  the  revolution  of  a  planet. 
This  motion  is  itself  the  principle  of  diversification,  and  is 
concretely  given  in  the  ceaseless  transformations  of  nature, 
so  that  nature  may  be  generally  conceived  in  terms  of  mat- 
ter and  form.     But  the  conception  must  provide  for  the 
transition  of  matter  into  forms  not  yet  realized,  for  it  is  just 
such  transitions  that  we  observe.     Form  and  matter  are  not 
welded  together  as  two  metals  might  be  forced  to  unite.     The 
stone  becomes  a  doorstep,  the  boy  a  man,  the  man  a  general. 
Motion  is  forward,  progressive,  productive,  and  it  is  ceaseless. 
We  are  not  to  think  of  it  as  once  beginning  and  by  and  by 
to  end,  but  we  should  rather  think  of  it  in  its  own  terms,  mak- 
ing the  fact  of  transition  itself  the  initial  and  important  fact. 
With  Aristotle,  however,  motion,  just  because  it  is  transition, 
is  not  self-sustained.     We  may  not  think  of  matter,  even  if 
we  endow  it  with  the  capacity  for  all  possible  forms,  as  shap- 
ing itself,  nor  of  form  molding  matter,  as  by  a  contriving 
hand.     The  transition  must  be  mediated,  and  in  the  works 
of  man's  art  it  is  mediated  by  the  interposition  of  man  him- 
self as  an  efficient  and  designing  factor.     But  the  observation 
cannot  be  transferred  to  nature  without  modification,  since 
we  find  there  no  artist  at  work  and  no  evidence  of  a  designing 


226  GREEK  LITERATURE 

power.  Indeed,  human  efficiency  itself  presents  in  its  own 
terms  the  situation  we  find  in  nature,  for  man's  activity  is 
also  that  motion  of  transition  from  what  is  now  to  that  which 
shall  be  hereafter.  But  it  contains  at  least  this  clue  :  man's 
activity  is  evoked  by  the  presence  in  him,  realized  in  thought, 
of  that  result  he  would  attain.  That  presence  does  not  cause 
his  hands  to  move  nor  guide  his  tools ;  it  is  no  substitute  for 
his  muscles ;  but  it  is  that  without  which  the  movements  of 
his  hands  would  be  merely  local  and  unproductive.  Democ- 
riius  might  appear  to  be  satisfied  with  a  world  where  things 
in  the  last  analysis  only  change  their  relative  positions;  but 
for  Aristotle,  if  such  a  change  is  at  the  same  time  the  move- 
ment of  matter  into  form,  the  transition  of  the  possible  into 
the  actual,  of  stuff  into  a  finished  and  different  work,  of  a  seed 
into  a  flower  and  a  germ  into  a  man,  there  must  be  in  nature 
some  factor  whose  presence  has  power  to  evoke  activity  and 
keep  it  continuously  sustained.  "  On  such  a  principle  heaven 
and  earth  depend.  Its  life  is  always  such  as  is  ours  in  those 
brief  moments  when  our  life  is  at  its  best."  In  these  words 
Aristotle  speaks  of  what  his  master  Plato  called  the  good, 
and  joins  him  in  the  Greek  refusal  to  think  of  nature's  ulti- 
mate meaning  in  less  exalted  terms. 

Aristotle's  philosophy  is  thus  a  philosophy  of  nature,  a 
cosmology  once  more,  rich  in  its  allusions  to  the  past, 
grounded  in  the  history  of  Greek  thought  and  developed 
from  it.  Greek  philosophy  did  not  die  with  him,  but  it  never 
surpassed  him — so  completely,  it  would  seem,  did  he  realize 
the  Greek  conception  of  nature  as  a  living  process  the  signifi- 
cance of  which  is  to  be  understood  in  the  light  of  what  it 
achieves.  Modern  philosophers  have  rarely  understood 
this  Greek  conception  of  nature.  Long  habituated  to  see  in 
final  causes  either  evidence  of  the  existence  and  activity  of 
God  or  a  silly  substitute  for  mechanical  forces,  they  have 
looked  for  the  significance  of  nature  in  theology  or  in  physics, 
turning  the  life  of  man  into  a  religious  problem  or  a  chemical 


PHILOSOPHY  227 

formula.  "With  Aristotle  the  significance  of  nature  is  seen 
in  her  products.  We  may  discover  how  these  are  produced, 
but  we  should  not  conceive  them  to  exist  for  the  sake  of  prov- 
ing that  there  is  a  God  or  that  there  are  mechanical  laws. 
If  they  prove  anything  at  all,  they  prove  nature's  capacities, 
point  to  her  possibilities,  demonstrate  that  she  can  generate 
and  support  the  ideal.  That  she  works  by  mechanical 
means,  Aristotle  never  doubts.  But  he  sees  in  mechanism 
instrumentation  only.  Since  nature  does  produce,  and  there 
was  consequently  a  time  when  any  specific  product  did  not 
yet  exist,  that  time  is  inadequately  conceived  unless  it  is 
prospectively  conceived.  The  future  is  ideally  in  it,  waiting, 
as  it  were,  for  the  quickening  stimulus  to  live.  Thus,  as 
Santayana  puts  it,  with  Aristotle  "  everything  ideal  has  a 
natural  basis  and  everything  natural  an  ideal  development." 

Yet  Aristotle  is  a  humanist.  It  is  man  that  thinks  of  na- 
ture after  this  fashion,  and  the  world  with  which  philosophy 
deals  is  consequently  man's  world.  All  things  exist  for  man. 
This  splendid  Greek  presumption  sounds  boastful  to  ears 
accustomed  to  conventional  and  professional  modesty.  With 
Aristotle,  however,  it  is  onlj^  the  statement  of  an  obvious 
fact.  He  did  not  think  that  all  things  were  made  for  man, 
nor  that  philosophy  is  necessarily  tainted  with  anthropo- 
morphism, important  only  as  a  human  pastime.  He  thought 
it  quite  obvious  that  of  all  nature's  products  man  is  the  one 
who  most  successfully  comprehends  her.  But  since  she  pro- 
duced him,  his  own  natural  significance  cannot  be  less  than 
that  of  his  discoveries.  There  are  two  types  of  philosophy 
which  for  Aristotle  are  preposterous,  —  the  one  which  can 
view  nature  as  a  play  where  man  is  only  a  spectator  or  a 
shifter  of  the  scenes,  and  the  one  which  seeks  a  significance 
for  human  life  apart  from  the  natural  history  of  man  and  a 
vision  of  his  possibilities. 

There  is  no  more  to  tell,  unless  one  should  go  on  to  recount 
how  Greek  philosophy  still  lived,  unsupported  by  the  na- 


228  GREEK    LITERATURE 

tional  life  which  gave  it  birth,  to  be  adopted  by  other  peoples 
and  adapted  to  other  needs.  It  was  its  fate  to  become  a 
philosophy  which  men  should  study  and  lecture  about. 
What  its  permanent  elements  are,  I  do  not  know,  and  so  I 
have  not  ventured  to  state.  Yet  I  may  end  with  this  asser- 
tion :  as  a  student  of  philosophy,  I  know  of  no  period  in  the 
history  of  human  thinking  which  so  well  repays  study,  which 
so  sustainingly  quickens  the  mind  and  encourages  the  soul. 
There  may  be  greater  philosophical  conceptions  than  those 
the  Greeks  have  left  us,  but  I  know  not  where  they  are  un- 
less they  are  in  the  future.  Their  attainment  I  can  believe 
to  be  possible  only  after  we  have  recovered,  as  a  habitual 
possession,  the  Greek  conception  of  nature  which  conceives 
her  as  adequate  for  man's  outlook  because  she  has  been  ade- 
quate for  his  production.  The  Phaedrus  of  Plato  closes 
with  a  prayer  offered  by  Socrates,  standing  under  a  spreading 
plane-tree  on  a  grassy  slope  above  the  cool  and  Hmpid  Ilissus, 
in  the  shade  of  blooming  and  fragrant  agnus  castus,  and  with 
the  air  summerlike  and  clear,  alive  with  the  song  of  the 
cicalas :  — 

Dear  Pan,  and  other  gods  who  may  be  here,  grant  that  I  may 
grow  beautiful  within.  May  what  I  have  with  what  I  am  be 
friendly.  May  I  count  the  wise  man  rich,  and  let  my  store  of  gold 
be  such  as  only  a  sober  man  could  take  as  his  spoil. 

Do  we  need  anything  else,  Phaedrus?  For  me  this  is  prayer 
enough. 

Frederick  J.   E.   Woodbridge. 


HELLENISTIC   LITERATURE 

Our  notions  of  what  is  peculiarly  Greek  are  obtained 
almost  exclusively  from  the  masterpieces  of  Greek  art  and 
literature  in  the  classical  period.  This  is  largely  due  to  an 
accident  in  the  transmission  of  Greek  literature.  If  the 
interests  of  the  earlier  part  of  the  Christian  era  had  led  to 
the  preservation  of  large  masses  of  prose  and  poetry  from 
the  centuries  which  form  the  subject  of  this  chapter,  it 
would  not  be  possible,  without  danger  of  contradiction,  to 
describe  the  Greeks  as  a  people  singularly  serene  and  sane, 
to  isolate  them  from  other  races  by  virtue  of  their  sense  of 
proportion  and  exquisite  taste.  As  it  is,  the  art  of  Sophocles 
and  his  contemporaries  embodies  all  that  is  distinctively 
Greek  to  the  layman  of  to-day.  For  most  readers,  the  three 
centuries  preceding  the  birth  of  Christ  mark  a  violent  change. 
An  aftermath,  an  evening  glow,  its  colors  now  subdued, 
now  brilliant,  suggesting  the  disappearance  of  a  greater 
light  rather  than  the  coming  of  any  new  splendor  —  the 
Hellenistic  or  Alexandrian  period  even  to-day  stands  in  the 
minds  of  many  people,  including  classical  students,  for 
decadence.  The  term  "purist"  stamps  the  morbidly  pure; 
"Hellenistic"  seems  to  suggest  to  some  students  of  literature 
a  diseased  form  of  the  truly  Hellenic.  On  the  contrary, 
the  work  of  these  later  centuries  is  wholesome  and  of  peculiar 
significance,  not  so  elevating  as  the  odes  of  Pindar  and  the 
dramas  of  Sophocles,  yet  of  no  less,  but  different  import  to 
the  modern  reader. 

The  Greek  world  conquered  by  Alexander  lost  the  equi- 
poise of  earlier  days ;  in  social  life  it  became  unregulated, 
dissolute ;    in  artistic  expression  it  lacked  the  dignity  and 

229 


230  GREEK  LITERATURE 

restraint  that  set  the  Greeks  apart  from  other  races  in  iso- 
lated grandeur  —  up  to  recent  times  this  was  the  conven- 
tional estimate.  The  historian  of  the  period  begrudged  it 
praise,  reminded  his  readers  that  every  age  of  great  achieve- 
ment is  succeeded  by  a  period  of  depression,  that  the  glory 
of  the  Elizabethans  makes  later  centuries  seem  dull  and 
drab,  and  in  general  that  once  literary  standards  have  been 
established  there  is  nothing  left  to  accomplish  but  slavish 
imitation,  elaboration  of  rules  of  art,  and  hstless  mechanical 
application  of  such  canons  to  the  old  themes,  with  such 
inventiveness  as  is  possible  in  the  refinement  of  details, 
—  that  very  refinement  killing  all  vigor  and  spontaneity. 

To-day  the  Hellenistic  period,  and,  in  general,  the  later 
centuries  of  Greek  life  and  thought,  are  occupying  our 
attention  more  largely  than  the  classical  period.  The  dis- 
coveries of  papyri  in  Egypt  are  slowly  filling  in  the  tre- 
mendous gaps  in  Hellenistic  literature.  With  new  zest  the 
student  of  religion  is  finding  in  these  later  days  the  seed- 
ground  of  Christianity.  The  history  of  language,  of  ancient 
law  and  political  organization,  is  set  in  a  new  light.  The 
student  of  literature  is  moved  to  look  more  deeply  into  the 
scanty  remains  of  artistic  literary  expression,  to  view  them 
and  the  life  which  they  portray  with  a  cheerful  optimism 
bred  of  historical  insight,  to  renounce  the  depreciatory 
estimate  of  earlier  historians  and  substitute  a  reasonable 
appreciation  of  what  these  artists  achieved.  They  are  no 
longer  to  be  regarded  as  a  degenerate  stock,  but  as  a  natural 
and  inevitable  development,  perhaps  inferior  to  the  earlier 
growth,  but  at  least  a  development,  and  desirable  for  the 
best  good  of  future  generations. 

In  the  days  of  the  great  tragedians  of  the  fifth  century, 
Greek  society  was  split  up  into  a  number  of  small  municipal 
units  —  Athens,  Sparta,  Corinth,  Thebes  —  city-states,  as  we 
now  call  them,  each  essentially  independent,  though  by  turns 
securing  supremacy  for  a  time  over  the  other  city-states. 


THE  HELLENISTIC   PERIOD  231 

Each  city-state  was  compactly  organized,  each  individual 
under  the  constraint  of  an  absolute  family  government, 
each  family  linked  indissolubly  to  other  families  of  the 
same  tribe,  the  various  tribes  forming  a  close  corporation  — 
the  city-state.  In  such  an  organization,  the  attitude  of  the 
individual  toward  the  various  duties  and  privileges  of  citi- 
zenship is  very  different  from  what  it  is  in  modern  society. 
Much  as  he  may  gain  from  the  consciousness  of  being  a 
member  of  the  body  politic,  the  average  citizen  easily  be- 
comes part,  and  a  very  small  part,  of  a  large  machine ;  a 
considerable  portion  of  his  life  is  absorbed  in  involuntary 
service;  the  state  is  omnipotent;  individual  initiative  is 
circumscribed.  Moreover,  whatever  intellectual  or  indus- 
trial liberty  may  as  the  result  of  general  enlightenment  be 
open  to  him,  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  his  daily  experience 
and  effort  are  found  almost  invariably  in  the  small  mu- 
nicipality. Any  widening  of  his  horizon,  any  attempt  to 
construct  a  larger  sphere  of  activity  for  himself  and  his 
fellows,  involves  a  disruption  of  the  compact  organism  of 
which  he  is  an  infinitesimal  part.  One  of  these  munici- 
palities, Athens,  furnishes  the  literature  of  the  fifth  and  part 
of  the  fourth  centuries,  the  literature  to  which  we  refer  as 
characteristic  of  the  best  Greek  product.  This  literature 
is  a  local  product,  and  reflects  the  ideas  of  a  small  number 
of  people  of  very  remarkable  equipment ;  the  product  can 
continue  only  so  long  as  this  city-state  continues ;  by  reason 
of  its  size,  isolation,  and  the  limits  it  sets  to  individual 
achievement,  the  city-state  cannot  hope  for  long  life.  The 
best  that  may  be  hoped  is  that  the  ideas  and  the  form  of 
expression  may  be  transmitted  to  others,  but  in  the  very  act 
of  transmission,  the  form  and  the  content  of  the  litera- 
ture must  change  with  the  changed  social  and  political  con- 
ditions of  the  new  era. 

This    aggregate    of    political    units,    independent    of    one 
another,   and   continually   at  odds   with   one   another,   the 


232  GREEK  LITERATURE 

master-minds  of  Philip  and  Alexander  of  Macedon  found  it 
easy  to  convert  into  a  monarchy.  Just  before  the  beginning 
of  our  period  the  new  monarchy  is  firmly  entrenched,  and  the 
Macedonian  conqueror  has  not  only  begun  to  organize  the 
Greek  citj'-states  into  a  new  and  larger  national  unity,  but 
has  forced  his  way  into  foreign  lands,  conquering  as  he 
goes,  carrying  with  him  Greek  armies  and  Greek  influence, 
disseminating  Greek  culture  among  peoples  hitherto  known 
to  the  Greeks  as  barbarians.  The  tremendous  extent  of 
Alexander's  conquests  made  it  necessary  to  expand  the 
means  of  communication  between  remote  parts  of  the  new 
empire ;  military  routes  were  established  in  the  course  of 
conquest ;  commercial  routes  followed  the  path  of  con- 
quest ;  the  remote  East  and  the  remote  West  were  made 
accessible  to  each  other.  Meantime  the  change  from  city- 
state  to  monarchy  resulted,  to  the  municipality,  in  a  release 
from  bondage.  In  varying  degrees  in  various  communities, 
individual  opportunity  is  widened.  The  Greek  is  no  longer 
confined  in  his  ambitions  and  in  his  daily  experience  to  his 
city-state ;  he  follows  with  interest  the  adventures  of  his 
fellow-countrymen  in  Asia  Minor  and  Eg>pt ;  often  he 
sallies  forth  from  his  native  city  to  establish  himself  along 
the  new  paths  of  communication  opened  up  as  the  result  of 
conquest.  Plato  and  Aeschylus  did  indeed  travel ;  now 
more  often  the  average  citizen  travelled,  carrying  with  him 
the  heritage  of  ideas  and  ideals  that  Plato  and  Aeschylus 
conceived  or  transmitted.  In  this  new  contact  of  Greek 
and  barbarian,  the  Greek  spirit  becomes  an  animating  force 
infused  into  the  chaotic  mass  of  non-Greek  peoples.  Civili- 
zation is  no  longer  limited  to  Greece  with  Athens  as  its 
centre.  Greek  intermarries  with  barbarian,  assimilates  his 
rehgious  views  and  rites,  modifies  his  own  local  dialect  under 
the  influence  of  other  Greeks  from  other  localities  with 
whom  he  is  thrown ;  there  ensues  an  amalgamation  of  Greek 
with  Greek,  and  of  Greek  wdth  barbarian,  that  affects  all 


THE  HELLENISTIC  PERIOD  233 

literature  written  in  Greek ;   it  is  now  a  world-literature,  no 
longer  Athenian  literature. 

The  centre  of  interest  in  this  new  cosmopolitan  age  is  the 
individual  man.  Biography  emerges  as  a  recognized  liter- 
ary type.  History,  in  the  hands  of  Polybius,  becomes  a 
study  of  great  personalities.  Philosophy  throws  emphasis 
upon  individual  ethics,  constructs  the  ideal  wise  man. 
Comedy  turns  from  the  political  and  social  problems  of  the 
city-state  to  universal  phases  of  individual  experience. 
Love-poetry  as  a  frank  expression  of  personal  feeling  recovers 
the  position  once  gained  for  it  by  Alcaeus  and  Sappho.  In 
literary  technique,  character-treatment  is  successfully  ini- 
tiated, though  never  becoming  so  deeply  introspective  as  in 
modern  literature.  Even  the  artist's  own  personality  is 
more  often  intruded  in  the  poetry  of  this  period  than 
earlier. 

Next  in  importance  to  the  individual  are  the  tangible  con- 
crete objects  that  surround  him.  The  impetus  given  to 
individual  freedom  and  the  new  world  suddenly  opened  to  an 
already  intelligent  people  resulted  in  a  predominant  interest 
in  the  realities  of  the  immediate  environment.  This  realism 
in  its  wholesome  manifestation  is  a  faithful  reproduction  of 
action  and  object,  but  naturally  enough  it  often  tends  to 
reproduce  the  sordid  and  base  as  well  as  the  sublime  and 
elevating.  It  is  this  phase  of  reaHsm,  combined  with  dis- 
proportionate emphasis  on  detail  and  a  lack  of  feeling  for 
some  other  qualities  of  the  classical  form,  that  leads  to  mis- 
interpretation of  the  art  of  the  period.  Wholesome  or 
unwholesome,  it  is  not  decadent,  but  an  inevitable  evolu- 
tion. Social  experience  has  widened,  and  the  first  reaction 
upon  the  new  experience  cannot  produce  a  literature  that 
detaches  the  realities  from  life  and  idealizes  them.  The 
interpretation  of  concrete  environment  rather  than  photo- 
graphic reproduction  is  the  goal,  but  as  yet  somewhat  dis- 
tant.    Even  in  this  period,  the  beginnings  of  an  effort  to 


234  GREEK  LITERATURE 

elevate    to  idealize,  are  discernible ;    Theocritus  is  a  very 
different  sort  of  realist  from  Herondas. 

It  does  not  impair  the  essential  truth  of  these  generaliza- 
tions if  one  points  to  traces  of  cosmopolitanism,  of  indi- 
vidualism, of  realism  in  the  life  and  thought  of  the  fifth 
century  before  these  social  and  political  changes  were  in- 
augurated. Euripides  is  the  great  forerunner  of  the  Hellen- 
istic period.  In  Plato,  in  Xenophon,  in  Isocrates,  one  may 
find  the  seeds  of  many  a  fruitful  growth  in  the  succeeding 
centuries.  So,  too,  in  another  direction  the  classical  period 
leads  the  way  to  an  important  change  in  the  thought  and 
practice  of  later  days.  The  Ionic  philosophers  and  the 
enlightened  discussion  of  fundamental  problems  at  Athens 
toward  the  end  of  the  fifth  century  tended  to  undermine 
religious  faith.  Even  at  that  time,  individuals  questioned 
the  content  of  myths,  doubted  the  efficacy  of  worship,  de- 
nied the  existence  of  the  Olympian  gods.  The  broadening 
of  experience  in  the  next  centuries  naturally  led  to  the 
spread  of  skepticism.  Now  the  average  citizen  loses  much 
of  his  faith  in  the  gods  of  the  old  era,  in  the  forms  of  worship, 
in  the  myths.  Yet  the  new  age  is  not  irreligious.  New 
conditions  require  new  ways  of  satisfying  the  old  need  of  the 
gods.  To  some  extent  the  weakening  of  belief  in  the  Olym- 
pian gods  simply  issued  in  a  more  receptive  attitude  toward 
non-Greek  divinities ;  the  new  contact  with  foreign  peoples 
brought  a  more  intimate  acquaintance  with  foreign,  and 
particularly  Oriental  cults ;  emotional  needs  were  readily 
gratified  by  the  adoption  of  orgiastic  rites  and  of  religious 
doctrine  permeated  with  mysticism  ;  for  this,  again,  the  fifth 
century  had  prepared  the  way.  But  a  more  significant 
result  of  skepticism  was  the  attempt  to  explain  away  the 
supernatural  elements  of  orthodox  belief ;  the  gods  were 
accounted  for  as  human  beings  whose  great  achievements 
justified  deification ;  and  once  this  was  granted,  there  was 
nothing  in  the  way  of  deifying  the  great  contemporary  cap- 


THE  HELLENISTIC   PERIOD  235 

tains  whose  exploits  in  the  present  seemed  to  distinguish 
them  as  benefactors  of  mankind ;  not  only,  then,  does  the 
Hellenistic  Greek  appropriate  foreign  cults,  not  only  does  he 
lower  gods  to  the  position  of  deified  human  beings,  but  he 
exalts  Alexander  and  his  marshals  to  godship.  The  full 
significance  of  the  movement  is  somewhat  exaggerated  in  the 
flippant  paean  of  praise  that  greeted  Demetrius  Poliorcetes 
on  his  arrival  at  Athens:  "As  the  sun  and  the  stars  thou 
appearest  to  us  with  thy  companions,  as  the  child  of  Posei- 
don and  Aphrodite.  The  other  gods  are  far  remote,  or  do 
not  exist  at  all,  or  do  not  hear  us,  but  thee  we  see  eye  to 
eye,  not  in  wood  or  stone,  but  in  the  flesh.  Therefore  we 
pray  thee  give  us  peace  :  for  thou  art  our  Lord  and  Master." 
Skepticism,  however,  finds  still  another  outlet.  As  a  sub- 
stitute for  the  Divine  Will,  for  Providence,  it  exalts  Fate 
or  Fortune,  and  regards  human  activity  as  subject  only  to 
a  despotic  or  capricious  mistress.  In  all  these  various  efforts 
to  meet  the  needs  of  the  new  nation  one  discerns  the  influ- 
ence of  contemporary  philosophy  and  a  characteristic  at- 
tempt to  adapt  the  older  beliefs  to  new  conditions,  to  avoid 
an  absolute  break  with  the  past ;  the  rationalizing  of  the  gods 
and  the  deification  of  men  is  in  consonance  with  the  ideas  of 
the  older  generation  in  worshipping  heroes  after  death ;  the 
supremacy  of  Fate  was  a  notion  fostered  in  some  philo- 
sophical schools. 

Cosmopohtanism,  individualism,  a  universal  intelligent 
interest  in  the  affairs  of  a  large  world,  unrestricted  freedom 
to  initiate,  to  develop ;  realism,  rationalism,  absorption  in  the 
men  and  things  of  the  known  world,  a  matter-of-fact  expla- 
nation of  the  unknown  in  simple  accordance  with  the  hard 
realities  of  the  known  world  —  these  are  dominant  char- 
acteristics of  the  Hellenistic  period.^  In  our  own  modern 
life  very  similar  conditions   prevail.     Hellenistic   literature 

'  The  general  characteristics  of  the  Hellenistic  period  are  more  fully 
treated  in  Wendland,  Die  hellenistisch-riymische  Kuliur,  Tubingen,  1907. 


236  GREEK  LITERATURE 

is,  with  some  obvious  qualifications,  essentially  modern ; 
the  Middle  Ages,  the  Renaissance,  all  the  intervening  cen- 
turies, have  enriched  our  experience.  But  in  contrast  with 
the  dramas  of  Aeschylus  and  Sophocles,  a  play  of  Menan- 
der,  an  idyl  of  Theocritus,  is  modern  in  so  far  as  the  general 
reader  may  approach  and  enjoy  it  without  readjustment. 
The  content,  excepting  certain  obvious  miiversal  truths,  and 
the  form  of  the  Prometheus  Bound,  of  the  Antigone,  of  the 
Frogs  of  Aristophanes,  or  any  other  masterpiece  of  the  Golden 
Age  of  Greek  Literature,  are  clearly  intelligible  only  to  him 
who  with  patience  and  sympathetic  interest  transposes  him- 
self into  the  environment  of  the  Athenian  of  the  fifth  cen- 
tury and  tries  to  visualize  the  life  and  comprehend  the 
thought  of  the  city-state.  A  play  of  Menander,  the  Syracusan 
idyl  of  Theocritus,  the  romance  of  Jason  and  Medea,  are 
almost  immediately  intelligible  to  every  modern  reader. 

The  modermiess  of  Hellenistic  prose  and  poetry  makes  it 
impracticable  to  define  its  qualities  in  general  terms.  Mod- 
ernness  is  equivalent  to  complexity.  Hellenistic  literature 
is  a  complicated  phenomenon.  It  becomes  difficult  to 
describe  any  literary  type,  most  of  all  the  literature  as  a 
whole :  simple  naturalism  over  against  pretentiousness 
and  pomposity ;  here  brutal  realism,  there  pictures  detached 
from  life,  conventionalized  or  dimly  idealized ;  the  idyllic 
peace  of  the  country  side  by  side  with  the  bustle  of  city  life. 
One  poet  expresses  his  thought  with  lucidity  and  grace, 
another  not  only  with  awkwardness,  but  with  a  conscious 
attempt  to  hide  the  thought  in  a  maze  of  riddles.  One  poem 
shows  all  the  restraint  and  dignity  peculiar  to  the  classical 
period ;  another  is  lavish  of  detail,  indulges  in  digression, 
and  digression  within  digression,  revels  in  rhetorical  orna- 
ment and  in  false  emotion.  One  poet  is  a  Sicilian  and  reveals 
the  simple  manners  and  poetic  imagination  of  Sicilian 
peasantry;  another  is  a  scholar  at  Alexandria  who  has 
spent  his  life  in  explaining  the  meaning  of  Homer ;    he  in- 


THE  HELLENISTIC   PERIOD  237 

trudes  unrelated  scraps  of  learning,  or  at  best  helps  to 
visualize  the  splendor  and  pomp  of  Alexandria,  the  new 
metropolis  of  the  new  Greek  world.  Even  the  same  poet 
is  elusive :  read  the  hymns  of  Callimachus  and  then  his 
epigrams;  the  reconciliation  of  these  two  diverse  products 
of  the  same  artist  is  a  severe  test  of  one's  appreciation  of 
Hellenistic  poetry.  No  wonder  that  the  histories  of  the 
period  contain  generalizations  that  even  a  superficial  ac- 
quaintance with  the  literature  overthrows.  All  these  con- 
tradictory qualities  are  but  the  manifestation  of  the  growing 
freedom  of  the  individual,  his  emancipation  from  the  sim- 
plicity and  narrowness  of  life  in  one  city-state  into  the 
varied  experiences  of  a  big  new  world.  Each  individual, 
each  new  experience,  supplies  the  interpretation  of  the 
resultant  poem.  The  homogeneity  of  life  in  the  city-state 
tended  to  produce  relative  uniformity  in  artistic  expression. 
The  new  age  promotes  infinite  variety. 

Yet  from  this  infinite  variety  there  emerge  a  few  note- 
worthy qualities  in  content  and  form,  of  permanent  signifi- 
cance. 

The  content  of  Hellenistic  literature  was  seriously  affected 
by  the  skepticism  of  the  times.  For  centuries  the  higher 
types  of  poetry  —  epos  and  tragedy  —  had  dealt  with  the 
old  myths.  The  conservative  tendencies  of  the  people  did 
not  readily  admit  of  relinquishing  these  staple  themes ;  but 
the  life,  the  spirit  of  these  myths,  was  dead  or  moril)und. 
It  was  no  longer  possible  to  reinterpret  them ;  the  poets 
who  continue  to  use  them  hardly  succeed  in  more  than  a 
reproduction  of  the  main  outlines,  with  changes  in  less 
important  details  and  lavish  decoration  of  the  skeleton  with 
rhetorical  ornament.  But  the  antiquarian  interest  of  the 
day  provided  a  substitute  for  the  old  myths.  Local  his- 
torians revealed  a  mine  of  legends ;  many  of  these  were 
love-stories.  To  this  new  material  poets  and  writers  of 
the  less  serious  prose  types  turned  with  eagerness. 


238  GREEK  LITERATURE 

Along  with  this  use  of  sentimental  legends  comes  a  frank 
avowal  of  individual  experience ;  the  epigram,  if  not  the 
elegy,  often  depicts  the  sweetness  and  bitterness  of  the 
poet's  real  or  imagined  passion.  Under  similar  social 
conditions  the  song-poetry  of  Alcaeus  and  Sappho  had 
anticipated  this  personal  love-lyric ;  Euripides,  again, 
had  emphasized  the  less  agreeable  phases  of  the  great 
passion  in  his  tragedies.  But  in  general  the  theme  was 
excluded  from  the  sublimer  types  of  poetry  in  the  classical 
period  by  the  prevalent  feeling  that  love  was  a  mere  disease, 
irreconcilable  with  Greek  notions  of  soundness  and  sanity, 
and  inappropriate  in  the  higher  forms  of  artistic  expres- 
sion. Calypso,  Circe,  Antigone,  are  no  exceptions ;  love  in 
Homer  and  Sophocles  is  a  mere  incident,  and  a  cold  incident, 
though  the  splendid  chorus  to  invincible  Eros  in  the  An- 
tigone and  philosophical  discussion  of  love  betray  the  under- 
currents that  reach  the  surface  in  the  Hellenistic  period 
and  have  ever  since  swept  through  literature  with  tidal 
force. 

This  new  theme,^  however,  does  not  entirely  free  itself 
from  the  limitations  imposed  by  Greek  notions.  Love 
is  a  disease  even  in  the  Hellenistic  period.  The  technique 
of  the  love-story  in  prose  or  in  verse  is  surprisingly  simple. 
Any  psychological  study  is  beyond  the  ken  of  the  inter- 
preter ;  as  a  disease  it  appeals  to  him  from  a  pathologi- 
cal standpoint.  The  period  of  inoculation  is  short ;  a  mo- 
ment is  enough.  The  only  efficient  cause  is  that  hero 
and  heroine  are  good-looking ;  as  an  external  agent  Eros 
plays  a  part  with  his  fatal  arrow.  Once  the  two  have  suc- 
cumbed, the  fever  waxes  with  astonishing  rapidity ;  the 
interpreter  delights  to  record  the  symptoms,  almost  exclu- 

1  Rohde,  Der  griechische  Roman,  second  edition,  Leipzig,  1900  ;  Schwartz, 
Funf  Vortrdge  ilber  den  griechischen  Roman,  Berlin,  1896 ;  essays  on  the 
romantic  vein  in  classical  literature  are  contained  in  Some  Aspects  of  the 
Greek  Genius  by  Butcher  (London,  1904),  pp.  245  ff.,  and  in  Lectures  on 
Classical  Subjects  by  Hardie  (London,  1903),  pp.  132  ff. 


THE  HELLENISTIC  PERIOD  239 

sively  physical  —  the  tremor,  the  ringing  in  the  ears,  loss 
of  speech,  pallor,  sleeplessness  —  a  harrowing  record  of 
love's  bittersweetness,  oftener  with  tragic  than  happy 
issue.  Necessarily  emotion  is  unrestrained,  and  the  earlier 
convention  of  self-control  breaks  down  in  the  realistic 
love-story  of  these  later  days. 

The  form  of  Hellenistic  literature  is  marked  by  a  con- 
scious effort  to  achieve  style.  Even  the  prose  that  deals 
primarily  with  fact  rather  than  fancy  often  strives  for 
the  phrase.  Every  language  has  in  its  colloquial  forms 
means  of  enforcing  the  thought,  of  pleasing  the  ear ;  Greek 
was  not  wanting  in  such  aids  to  forceful  and  elegant 
expression.  But  the  systematic  study  and  conscious  use 
of  rhetorical  devices  became  prominent  only  toward  the 
end  of  the  fifth  century.  Rhetoric  speedily  became  an 
important  element  in  education.  Philosophy,  once  hostile, 
was  eventually  reconciled  to  it.  In  the  classical  period, 
however,  the  movement  was  in  the  main  controlled  by  a 
sense  of  proportion  and  good  taste.  Antithesis  and  asso- 
nance were  judiciously  employed.  The  ornament  was  not 
obtrusive.  The  style  remained  direct  and  simple.  But 
the  effect  of  intensive  study  soon  became  apparent.  In 
the  Hellenistic  period  it  is  no  doubt  true  that  sound  often 
takes  precedence  of  sense,  that  novelty  of  manner  is  more 
essential  than  novelty  of  matter.  Still  this  very  straining 
for  novelty  resulted  in  an  important  achievement :  the 
Hellenistic  Greeks  broke  up  the  long  flowing  sentences 
of  earlier  prose  into  short  abrupt  clauses  —  a  style  that 
Seneca  and  Tacitus  cultivated  in  Latin ;  these  short,  crisp 
sentences  more  easily  became  the  vehicle  of  pointed  epi- 
grams ;  antithesis  and  assonance  enforced  the  point ;  rhyth- 
mical structure  and  poetic  diction  enhanced  the  effect. 
This  decorative  style  was  not  always  exaggerated  in  our 
period.  The  strong  scientific  interest  of  the  day  held  the 
movement   to   some    extent    in    check    by   encouraging    a 


240  GREEK  LITERATURE 

rather  crude  form  of  expression.  But  later  there  developed 
a  florid  euphuistic  style  so  sharpl}'  in  contrast  with  the 
directness  and  simplicity  of  the  earliest  standards  that 
reaction  was  inevitable ;  and  it  is  to  the  unpopularity  in 
later  days  of  this  ornamental  style  that  the  fragmentary 
nature  of  our  remains  of  Hellenistic  literature  is  largely 
due.  The  influence  of  Hellenistic  style  on  Latin  literature, 
however,  was  potent,  and  through  that  medium  it  became 
a  significant  factor  in  the  development  of  form. 

The  injurious  effect  of  striving  for  the  phrase  was  pro- 
moted by  the  practice  of  declamation.  As  school  exercises 
and  public  performances  these  formal  speeches  on  subjects 
far  removed  from  the  normal  experiences  of  daily  life  by 
their  artificiality  of  form  and  content  seriouslj^  interfered 
vrith.  naturalness  and  spontaneity.  The  declamation  be- 
came a  feeble  substitute  for  the  oration  of  the  classical 
period.  Oratory  could  no  longer  maintain  the  prestige 
it  enjoyed  under  Demosthenes  in  the  city-state.  The 
loss  of  independence  stifled  the  eloquence  that  once  stirred 
the  people  in  the  Athenian  assemblies.  The  courts  fur- 
nished the  chief  natural  occasion  for  public  speaking,  and 
the  speech  in  court  was  limited  to  the  case  in  hand. 

In  general  the  prose  types  are  of  slight  significance  to  the 
student  of  literature.  The  scanty  remains  of  Hellenistic 
prose  in  any  artistic  form  make  it  difficult  to  recon- 
struct the  characteristic  features,  although  there  are  some- 
times clear  reflections  in  later  Greek  and  in  Latin  litera- 
ture. The  scientific  prose  can  hardly  be  called  literature. 
Much  that  needs  to  be  said  in  an  account  of  the  culture 
of  the  Hellenistic  period  would  be  out  of  place  in  a  de- 
scription of  the  prose  as  a  form  of  art.  Posidonius,  for  ex- 
ample, exerted  a  considerable  influence  upon  the  content  of 
Latin  prose  and  poetry,  but  the  fragments  of  his  Greek  works 
are  so  meagre  that  he  is  more  fitly  treated  in  an  account 
of  Latin  literature,  or  of  Hellenistic  culture,  than  here. 


THE  HELLENISTIC   PERIOD  241 

Important  as  the  doctrines  of  various  philosophical 
schools  are  in  the  history  of  thought  Hellenistic  philos- 
ophy produced  no  significant  masterpieces  remotely  com- 
parable to  the  dialogues  of  Plato.  Many  of  the  philos- 
ophers renounced  literarj^  composition  altogether ;  others 
composed  dry  technical  treatises  without  literary  finish. 
But  an  important  contribution  was  made  to  the  develop- 
ment of  literary  form  in  the  use  of  new  or  remodelled  types 
of  prose  composition.  The  philosophical  dialogue  and  the 
symposium  were  cultivated ;  the  epistle  —  didactic,  hor- 
tatory, consoling  —  was  so  common  as  to  be  the  subject 
of  parody,  and  the  Christian  epistle  owes  much  to  its  Hel- 
lenistic prototype.  The  masses  were  reached  with  great 
effectiveness  by  a  presentation  in  vivid,  dramatic  prose 
adorned  with  figures,  similes,  quotations,  anecdotes,  epi- 
gram, antithesis,  and  couched  in  short,  conversational 
sentences,  of  themes  immediately  affecting  the  conduct 
of  life,  virtues  and  vices  of  all  sorts ;  this  new  form,  known 
as  the  diatribe,  an  anticipation  of  the  sermon,  was  influ- 
ential in  unexpected  ways ;  for  its  spirit  and  tone  as  well 
as  its  rhetorical  form  became  so  general  as  to  permeate  un- 
related literary  types,  even  of  poetry.  The  Roman  satir- 
ists often  echo  this  Hellenistic  preachment  to  the  masses. 

The  conquests  of  Alexander  and  his  successors  naturally 
led  to  essays  in  history ;  antiquarian  activity  and  scientific 
interest  found  expression  in  manifold  prose  treatises,  but 
few  of  them  belong  in  the  field  of  belles-lettres.  Such  prose 
was  written  by  practical  persons  for  practical  purposes.  The 
best  example  of  it  is  contained  in  the  history  of  Polybius, 
who,  however  much  he  renounced  the  graces  of  literary  style, 
stands  forth  as  a  significant  personality,  a  sane  observer  of 
phenomena,  a  judicious  appraiser  of  causes  and  effects, 
vivid  in  his  description  of  events,  keen  in  analj^sis  of  character. 

To  us  to-day  a  by-product  of  historical  prose  is  of  special 
interest.     History  and  myth  in  the  Greek  mind  were  not 


242  GREEK  LITERATURE 

so  carefully  distinguished  as  they  are  at  present.  Fact  and 
fancy  were  not  irreconcilable.  Even  the  Iliad  might  pass  as 
a  historical  document.  So  it  comes  about  that  fictitious 
prose  narrative,  which  bulks  so  large  in  modern  literature, 
appears  even  before  the  Hellenistic  period  in  the  guise  of 
history.  Early  studies  of  alien  peoples  and  unknown  lands 
often  included  legends,  piquant  love  stories,  tales  of  the 
marvellous,  picked  up  from  more  or  less  trustworthy  in- 
formants. Such  fiction  forms  a  considerable  part  of  the 
history  of  Herodotus.  As  Greek  civilization  developed,  the 
increase  of  travel  and  acquaintance  with  barbaric  peoples 
sharpened  the  contrast  between  the  rude  simplicity  of  un- 
civilized folk  and  the  complex,  often  vicious,  development 
of  the  Greek  world;  in  time,  idealists  began  to  illustrate 
their  conceptions  of  the  highest  forms  of  social  and  political 
organization  by  reference  to  the  naturalism  of  barbaric 
nations.  Philosophers  constructed  Utopias  peopled  with 
fanciful  beings  living  under  ideal  social  conditions.  Into 
such  Utopian  fiction  were  interwoven  many  features,  many 
tales,  derived  from  historians  and  travelers  who  blended 
fancy  with  fact.  Naturally  the  Eastern  world  supplied 
much  of  the  material ;  there  is  a  distinct  Oriental  coloring. 
In  brief,  one  may  detect,  before  our  period  and  to  a  greater 
extent  during  it,  the  beginnings  of  various  forms  of  fictitious 
prose  narrative  of  love  and  adventure.  Short  stories, 
mainly  love-tales,  not  only  adorned  the  pages  of  sober  his- 
tory, but  were  collected  separately ;  these  were  sometimes, 
perhaps  generally,  grouped  with  reference  to  the  region 
whence  they  came  ;  an  example  is  the  famous  Milesian  Tales, 
the  date  and  precise  nature  of  which  are  uncertain ;  anti- 
quarian interests  in  our  period  must  have  added  consid- 
erably to  such  collections,  and  the  material  was  often  made 
over  into  verse.  Utopian  fiction  as  the  expression  of  the 
philosopher's  idealism  is  as  early  as  Plato ;  in  the  Hellen- 
istic period  Hecataeus  and  Euhemerus  used  the  form  to 


THE  HELLENISTIC  PERIOD  243 

express  their  rationalistic  interpretation  of  religion ;  the 
latter  imagined  that  he  visited  three  islands  on  the  way 
from  the  Red  Sea  to  the  Indian  Ocean ;  in  the  island  of 
Panchaea  he  found  traces  of  those  happy  days  when  the  gods 
were  but  powerful  men  on  earth ;  the  people  are  ideal  folk 
living  in  a  small  Paradise.  This  work  was  translated  into 
Latin  by  Ennius.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  tales  of 
travel  and  adventure  without  any  didactic  purpose  were  also 
current. 

This  fictitious  narrative  appears  in  still  another  form. 
Closely  associated  as  it  was  with  historical  interest  and 
historical  narrative,  it  naturally  found  its  way  into  Hellen- 
istic history,  and  in  no  other  case  more  significantly  than 
into  the  accounts  of  Alexander's  conquests.  A  fanciful 
narrative  of  his  exploits,  in  the  form  of  letters,  forms  the 
Hellenistic  nucleus  of  what  later  became  by  constant  accre- 
tions, the  Alexander-romance.  The  existence  of  historical 
romance  ^  in  our  period,  therefore,  has  long  been  suspected. 
This  suspicion  was  recently  confirmed  by  the  discovery  of  a 
papyrus  fragment  of  some  length  which  gives  the  torso  of  a 
story  of  love  and  adventure  with  two  famous  historical  char- 
acters as  hero  and  heroine,  Ninus  and  Semiramis.  The 
story  plays  freely  with  historical  facts ;  little  remains  of 
actual  history  save  the  main  characters.  Such  material 
points  the  way  to  that  interesting  body  of  later  fiction  which 
we  know  as  the  Greek  Romances,  extending  from  the  first 
century  after  Christ  to  the  Renaissance.  In  general,  the 
outlines  of  all  this  fictitious  fanciful  prose  in  the  Hellenistic 
period  are  tantalizingly  vague ;  the  modern  reader  must 
turn  to  the  Roman  novels  of  Petronius  and  Apuleius  and  to 
the  Greek  Romances,  and  seek  in  the  story  of  the  matron  of 
Ephesus,  in  the  adventures  of  the  robbers  in  Apuleius,  in 
the  story  of  Cupid  and  Psyche,  in  the  incoherent  narrative 

'  Wilamowitz,  Greek  Historical  Writing  (translated  by  Gilbert   Murray), 
Oxford,  1908. 


244  GREEK  LITERATURE 

of  harrowing  escapades  of  hero  and  heroine  in  the  Romances, 
the  developed  form  of  many  types  of  fiction  that  make  the 
Hellenistic  period  significant  to  a  reader  of  the  modern 
novel.  It  is  worth  noting  that  the  general  trend  of  such 
fiction  is  away  from  realism ;  it  is  a  fanciful  ideal  world  into 
which  most  of  this  narrative  carries  us. 

In  turning  to  the  poetry,  we  reach  more  certain  ground. 
The  material  is  greater  in  amount  and  more  immediately 
appealing  to  the  modern  student. 

The  epic  is  represented  by  a  single  complete  poem,  the 
Tale  of  the  Argonauts  by  Apollonius  of  Rhodes.  Tradi- 
tion says  it  is  the  issue  of  an  academic  quarrel  in  which 
Apollonius  contended  there  was  still  room  for  the  long, 
unorganized  Homeric  epic.  His  poem,  therefore,  is  remi- 
niscent of  Homer  in  language  and  structure.  Like  Odys- 
seus, the  hero  Jason  roams  over  the  world  and  survives 
many  hazardous  adventures  in  his  effort  to  obtain  the  golden 
fleece.  Severe  tasks  are  imposed  upon  him  which  he  accom- 
plishes with  the  aid  of  Medea ;  she  has  fallen  in  love  with 
him  at  first  sight,  and  by  her  magic  power  preserves  him  from 
harm ;  as  a  reward  the  hero  steals  her  from  her  home  and 
parents  and  makes  her  his  bride.  The  poem  is  full  of  Ho- 
meric tags,  Homeric  diction,  similes  in  Homeric  style,  though 
often  original  in  content ;  the  structure  is  very  loosely 
episodic,  and  lacks  unity.  But  the  poet  reveals  considerable 
descriptive  power,  both  in  accounts  of  perilous  adventure 
and  especially  in  the  portrayal  of  feeling.  Much  less  suc- 
cessful is  his  handling  of  rapid  narrative ;  the  character 
treatment  is  weak  and  ineffectual,  except  in  the  case  of  the 
hero  and  heroine  and  one  or  two  incidental  persons.  The 
poet's  imagination  strains  after,  rather  than  reaches  by  any 
natural  exercise,  its  very  modest  attainment.  Yet,  in  spite 
of  some  defects,  the  third  book  at  least,  and  individual 
passages  in  other  parts  of  the  poem,  show  no  little  power. 
However  simple  and  superficial  the  technique  of  it  may  be, 


THE  HELLENISTIC  PERIOD.  245 

and  however  true  it  is  that  the  reader  of  Vergil's  story  of 
Dido  finds  in  it  only  occasion  for  odious  comparison,  the 
love-story  of  Jason  and  Medea  is  of  permanent  value  as  the 
earliest  complete  example  in  extant  Greek  literature  of 
a  romance  in  narrative  form,  essentially  of  the  modern  type. 
Such  qualities  as  it  possesses  may  be  illustrated  in  the 
poet's  description  of  the  first  interview  between  Jason  and 
Medea.  Medea  is  already  in  love ;  she  comes  to  bring  him 
the  magic  charm ;  awaiting  his  approach,  she  has  bidden 
her  handmaidens  sing  and  dance  and  gather  flowers  :  — 

But  Medea,  her  thoughts  unto  nought  else  turned,  upon  nought 

could  be  stayed. 
Howsoever  she  sang  —  but  never  a  song,  howso'er  she  essayed. 
Pleased  her,  that  long  its  melody  winged  her  feet  for  the  dance ; 
But  ever  she  faltered  amidst  them,  her  eyes  ever  wandered  askance 
Away  from  the  throng  of  her  maidens  unresting  ;  and  over  the  ways. 
Turning  aside  her  cheeks,  far  off  ever  strained  she  her  gaze. 
O  the  heart  in  her  breast  oft  fainted,  whenever  in  fancy  she  heard 
Fleet  past  her  the  sound  of  a  footfall,  the  breath  of  a  breeze  as 

it  stirred. 
But  it  was  not  long  ere  the  hero  appeared  to  her  yearning  eyes 
Stately  striding,  as  out  of  the  ocean  doth  Sirius  uprise. 
Who  climbeth  the  sky  most  glorious  and  clear  to  discern  from  afar, 
But  unto  the  flocks  for  measureless  mischief  a  baleful  star : 
Even  so  came  Aison's  son  to  the  maiden  glorious  to  see,  — 
But  with  Jason's  appearing  dawned  troublous  misery. 
Then  it  seemed  as  her  heart  dropped  out  of  her  bosom  ;  a  dark  mist 

came 
Over  her  eyes,  and  hot  in  her  cheeks  did  the  blushes  flame. 
Nor  backward  nor  forward  a  step  could  she  stir :   all  strength  was 

gone 
From  her  knees ;    and  her  feet  to  the  earth  seemed  rooted ;    and 

one  after  one 
Her  handmaidens  all  drew  back,  and  with  him  was  she  left  alone. 
So  these  twain  stood  —  all  stirless  and  wordless  stood  face  to  face  : 
As  oaks  they  seemed,  or  as  pines  upsoaring  in  stately  grace, 
Which  side  by  side  all  still  mid  the  mountains  rooted  stand 
When  winds  are  hushed ;   but  by  breath  of  the  breeze  when  at  last 

they  are  fanned, 


246  GREEK  LITERATURE 

Stir  they  with  multitudinous  murmur  and  sigh  —  so  they 

By  love's  breath  stirred  were  to  pour  out  all  in  their  hearts  that  lay. 

This  distress  Jason  comforts,  asks  for  the  magic  herbs,  and 
praises  her  beauty ;    the  poet  continues  :  — 

Extolling  her  so  spake  he ;   and  her  eyelids  drooped,  while  played 

A  nectar  smile  on  her  lips ;  and  melted  the  heart  of  the  maid 

By  his  praising  uplifted ;   her  eyes  are  a  moment  upraised  to  his 

eyes 
And  all  speech  faileth ;  no  word  at  the  first  to  her  lips  may  rise ; 
But  in  one  breath  yearned  she  to  speak  forth  all  her  joy  and  pain. 
And  with  hand  ungrudging  forth  from  her  odorous  zone  hath  she 

ta'en 
The  charm,  and  he  straightway  received  it  into  his  hands  full  fain. 
Yea,  now  would  she  even  have  drawn  forth  all  her  soul  from  her 

breast 
And  had  laid  it  with  joy  in  his  hands  for  her  gift,  had  he  made 

request. 
So  wondx'ously  now  from  the  golden  head  of  Aison's  son 
Did  Love  outlighten  the  witchery-flame ;   and  her  sweet  eyes  shone 
With   the  gleam   that  he  stole  therefrom,   and  her  heart  glowed 

through  and  through 
Melting  for  rapture  away,  from  the  lips  of  the  rose  as  the  dew 
At  the  sun's  kiss  melteth  away,  when  the  day-spring  is  kindled 

anew.^ 

This  passage  not  only  illustrates  the  poet's  imagery  and  his 
power  of  suggesting  emotional  distress,  but  it  introduces 
one  immediately  to  the  new  atmosphere  of  Hellenistic  poetry. 
Such  unregulated  emotion  may  seem  un-Greek,  but  new 
social  conditions  have  made  the  portrayal  of  such  feeling 
legitimate  even  in  the  higher  types  of  poetry. 

Apollonius's  poem  was  one  issue  of  the  dispute  over  the 
propriety  in  these  later  days  of  the  Homeric  epic.  The 
chief  opponent  was  Callimachus,  who  representing  a  reac- 
tionary movement,  a  new  modern  spirit  wearied  by  the 
length  of  the  old  epic  and  its  tedious  iteration  of  old  themes, 

>  The  Tale  of  the  Argonauts,  translated  by  A.  S.  Way,  London,  1901. 
(Book  III,  947-971,  1007-1020). 


THE  HELLENISTIC  PERIOD  247 

declared  that  the  new  world  must  read  its  narrative  poetry 
in  one  sitting,  or  we  should  better  say,  hear  it  recited  at  one 
sitting.  To  meet  this  demand  the  epyllium,  or  short  epic, 
was  cultivated,  marked  by  exquisite  finish  and  a  correspond- 
ing defect  of  vigor  and  spontaneity ;  in  its  best  form  it  has 
the  grace  and  nicety  of  the  miniature  in  contrast  with  the 
broad  fresco  of  the  old  epic,  but  in  unskilful  hands,  it  is  marred 
by  copious  detail,  pedantry,  and  insincere  feeling  —  weak- 
nesses, however,  that  are  not  peculiar  to  the  epyllium. 
One  may  easily  appreciate  the  charm  and  the  tediousness  of 
this  new  creation  by  reading  such  Latin  adaptations  as  we 
have  in  Catullus's  Peleus  and  Thetis,  and  in  the  Ciris  at- 
tributed to  Vergil.  The  possibilities  were  best  realized  in  the 
fourth  book  of  the  Aeneid,  but  it  is  doubtful  if  any  Hellenistic 
poet  matched  Vergil's  achievement.  Callimachus  himself  il- 
lustrated his  conception  of  the  epic  in  the  Hecale,  in  which  was 
described  the  entertainment  of  Theseus,  before  his  encounter 
with  the  Marathonian  bull,  by  Hecale,  a  poor  old  woman. 
The  poet  dwelt  upon  the  details  of  the  humble  surround- 
ings and  of  the  modest  entertainment  which  the  kindly  old 
woman  offered  the  hero,  to  her  a  stranger.  The  details 
were  realistic,  the  setting  idyllic ;  the  atmosphere  of  simple 
human  kindliness  and  divine  appreciation  is  reproduced  in 
Ovid's  story  of  Philemon  and  Baucis. 

In  epic  poetry,  and  in  some  other  types,  there  were  often 
intruded  information  and  allusion  and  discussion,  and  even 
diction,  that  betray  academic  interest.  Pedantry  has  long 
been  regarded  as  a  characteristic  blemish  in  Hellenistic 
poetry.  Much  of  it  may  be  explained  as  appealing  to  newly 
awakened  intellectual  interests  on  the  part  of  the  reader  or 
hearer ;  some  of  it  is  doubtless  a  selfish  intrusion  of  the 
artist's  scholarly  interest.  But  the  extent  of  it  is  somewhat 
less  than  most  readers  imagine.  Not  a  few  types  —  comedy, 
the  mime,  epigram,  for  example  —  are  quite  free  from  such 
inartistic  features.     In  the  less  realistic,  less  personal  poetry, 


248  GREEK  LITERATURE 

pedantry  has  a  freer  range.  It  is  a  natural  issue  of  the 
scholarly,  scientific  tendency  of  the  day.  This  tendency 
found  unimpeded  expression  in  didactic  poetry  in  which  the 
driest  themes  were  set  forth,  in  various  metres,  but  most 
frequently  in  hexameter  verse.  Of  these  didactic  poems 
several  are  important  to  the  reader  of  Latin  poetry  ;  Aratus's 
Phaenomena,  an  astronomical  poem,  was  translated  by 
several  Romans,  the  Georgics  and  Metamorphoses  of  Nican- 
der  are  part  of  the  background  of  Vergil's  and  Ovid's  poems 
of  the  same  names,  but  the  Latin  poets  in  both  cases  far 
surpassed  their  Hellenistic  model. 

To  the  modern  reader  "elegy"  and  "epigram"  describe 
two  very  distinct  literary  types.  The  Greek  forms,  how- 
ever, to  which  we  loosely  apply  these  names  are  misrep- 
resented if  the  connotation  attached  to  "elegy"  and  "epi- 
gram" is  transferred  to  the  ancient  types.  From  a  Greek 
standpoint  an  elegy  is  a  relatively  long  poem  written  in 
elegiac  couplets;  an  epigram  is  a  relatively  short  poem, 
usually  in  elegiac  couplets;  the  subject-matter  of  both 
types  is  varied:  "elegy"  in  the  sense  of  a  lament  for  the 
dead  describes  only  a  small  portion  of  Greek  elegy;  "epi- 
gram" in  the  sense  of  a  short  satirical  poem  is  too  limited 
in  meaning  to  suggest  the  wide  range  covered  by  Greek 
epigram.  Elegy  and  epigram,  in  subject-matter,  vary  at 
different  periods  of  Greek  literature,  and  in  one  and  the 
same  period  each  type  is  often  elastic ;  but  both  are  alike 
in  external  form,  in  metre,  save  for  a  few  epigrams  in  other 
than  elegiac  verse. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  themes  treated  in 
Hellenistic  elegy  were  more  varied  than  our  extant  mate- 
rial suggests.  In  earlier  days  the  elegy  had  served  to  ex- 
press sorrow  for  the  loss  of  friends  and  kin,  patriotic  ad- 
monition, personal  advice ;  possibly  its  scope  had  been 
widened  to  include  various  convivial  themes  in  which 
wine  and  woman  were  the  central  interest.     It  is  unlikely 


THE   HELLENISTIC  PERIOD  249 

that  such  flexibihty  was  restricted  in  the  Hellenistic  period. 
But  the  extant  fragments  of  Hellenistic  elegy  reveal  a  domi- 
nant interest  in  mythological  narrative ;  the  narrative 
was  often  inspired  by  the  poet's  personal  experience ;  only 
incidentally,  however,  does  he  reveal  it.  This  mythologi- 
cal narrative  is  usually  sentimental,  and  in  technique  il- 
lustrates the  conventional  features  of  the  Hellenistic 
love-story.  The  mythological  basis,  however,  often  tempted 
the  poet  into  learned  digression.  In  many  cases,  there- 
fore, the  poems  were  a  curious  mixture  of  tender  senti- 
ment verging  on  sentimentality  and  pedantic  argument. 
In  this  respect  elegy  and  epyllium  had  much  in  common. 

The  poet's  personal  experience,  real  or  fancied,  finds 
no  expression  in  extant  elegy.  The  shorter  elegiac  poems, 
however,  known  as  epigrams,  are  very  commonly  a  con- 
fession of  personal  feeling.  They,  rather  than  the  elegy, 
seem  in  many  instances  to  prepare  the  way  for  the  love- 
poems  of  Ovid,  Tibullus,  and  Propertius,  fori  Roman  el- 
egy, in  so  far  as  it  is  concerned  with  the  poet's  own  senti- 
mental experience.  This,  however,  is  only  one  of  many 
topics  treated  in  the  epigram.  The  wide  range  of  sub- 
ject-matter, the  great  variety  of  authors  represented  in 
our  collections,  make  this  type  the  most  valuable  docu- 
ment that  we  possess  for  the  discovery  of  essential  charac- 
teristics of  Hellenistic  poetry. 

In  the  preceding  centuries  the  epigram  in  the  main  had 
served  practical  purposes.  The  tombstone  and  the  vo- 
tive offering  to  the  god  had  chiseled  upon  them  1  few  el- 
egiac couplets,  in  the  one  case  mentioning  the  name  of 
the  dead,  the  family  to  which  he  belonged,  his  residence, 
and  a  brief  characterization ;  in  the  other  case  the  name 
of  the  giver,  of  the  divinity  approached,  and  a  suggestion 
of  the  occasion  of  the  offering.  In  the  time  of  the  Per- 
sian Wars  the  patriotism  of  Greek  warriors  was  celebrated 
on  the  public  monuments  erected  in  their  honor,  and  in 


250  GREEK  LITERATURE 

this  connection  professional  poets  were  called  in  to  compose 
the  epitaphs.  The  private  inscriptions  were  often  the 
work  of  unskilful  hands,  but  the  classical  period  had  noth- 
ing finer  than  the  public  inscriptions  attributed  to  Simon- 
ides.  Beside  this  inscribed  epigram  in  the  classical  period 
there  are  traces  of  what  for  convenience  we  may  call  the 
literary  epigram,  to  be  recited,  or  read  from  manuscript ; 
these  traces  are  vague  and  dubious,  but  even  before  the 
Hellenistic  period  the  Greeks  used  the  short  elegiac  poem 
for  literary  as  well  as  practical  purposes.  We  may  even 
grant  the  very  plausible  theory  that  on  convivial  occasions 
brief  recitations  in  elegiac  couplets  formed  part  of  the  enter- 
tainment ;  in  that  case  there  would  be  every  reason  why 
a  great  variety  of  themes  should  be  treated  in  short  el- 
egiac poems.  In  this  great  variety  one  would  not  be  sur- 
prised to  find  poems  that  were  distinctly  satirical,  and  in 
any  case  without  any  satirical  intent  on  the  writer's  part 
the  few  couplets,  often  no  more  than  three,  which  the  poet 
had  at  his  service,  would  tempt  to  the  making  of  a  point, 
and  easily  a  barbed  point.  From  this  kind  of  epigram, 
which  was  not  very  common  until  just  before  the  time  of  the 
Roman  poet  Martial,  the  modern  term  epigram  gets  its 
specific  connotation. 

However  far  the  classical  Greeks  may  have  gone  in  using 
the  epigram  consciously  as  a  literary  type,  and  however 
much  the  restriction  to  epitaph  and  votive  offering  may 
have  yielded  as  early  as  the  sixth  century  to  a  more  elas- 
tic usag/of  this  metrical  form,  we  shall  not  be  far  wrong 
in  saying  that  the  literary  epigram  treating  of  almost  any 
conceivable  theme  is  essentially  a  Hellenistic  creation. 
It  now  becomes  the  favorite  mode  of  expressing  any  oc- 
casional emotion,  of  celebrating  any  occasional  event.  The 
inscribed  epigram  may  still  have  been  cultivated,  and  the 
literary  epigram  suggested  by  the  death  of  a  friend  or  the 
occasion  of  an  offering  to  the  gods  is  common.     Indeed, 


THE   HELLENISTIC   PERIOD  251 

the  distinctive  characteristics  of  the  Hterary  epigram  are 
those  features  that  survive  from  the  inscribed  epigram. 
The  Hmits  of  space  on  the  monument  necessitated  con- 
ciseness and  suggestiveness ;  the  thought  must  be  complete' 
when  one  reaches  the  end,  and  yet  the  very  brevity  of  the 
form  makes  the  poem  a  failure  unless  there  are  implica- 
tions, illuminating  suggestions  that  enrich  the  content 
without  breaking  the  mold.  It  must  not  be  "blurred 
by  afterthought,"  but  the  result  is  barren  if  the  poet  does 
not  mean  somewhat  more  than  he  says.  And  the  "fine  tact" 
appears  in  stopping  short,  and  far  short  of  the  enigma  as 
well  as  in  going  beyond  the  obvious.^ 

The  rich  variety  of  content,  and  even  of  form  apart  from 
the  metre,  makes  the  large  number  of  epigrams  far  from 
monotonous  reading.  We  can  discern  the  budding  forth 
of  the  inscription  into  the  imaginative  poem.  An  origi- 
nal inscription  would  have  read:  "Here  lies  Timonoe, 
daughter  of  Timotheus,  of  Methymna ;  her  husband  Euthy- 
menes  mourns  her  loss."  But  the  Hellenistic  poet  presents 
it  all  in  a  different  form;  he  stops  and  reads  the  name, 
then  comments:  "'Timonoe?'  Who  are  you?"  Read- 
ing further,  he  exclaims:  "Why,  I  had  not  known  you 
but  for  your  father  Timotheus's  name  upon  the  stone  and 
Methymna  your  native  town.  Yes,  I  grant  you,  your  hus- 
band Euthymenes  does  mourn  your  loss."  Here  all  the 
formulas  of  the  inscription  are  retained,-  but  a  dramatic 
situation  and  added  pathos  enrich  the  content.  This 
conversational   form   may  lead  far   beyond    any  inscribed 

'  Translations  of  Hellenistic  epigrams  may  be  found  in  Mackail,  Select 
Epigrams  from  the  Greek  Anthology,  second  edition,  London,  lOOfi,  accom- 
panied by  a  stimulating  introductory  essay ;  translations  by  various  hands 
into  verse  in  Tomson,  Selections  from  the  Greek  Anthology,  London,  1SS9; 
by  Lilla  Cabot  Perry,  From  the  Garden  of  Hellas,  New  York,  1S91.  Many 
love-poems  of  the  fifth  book  of  the  Palatine  Anthology  are  translated  by 
Paton,  Anlhologiae  Graecae  Erotica,  London,  1898.  All  these  collections  in- 
clude epigrams  of  the  later  periods. 


252  GREEK   LITERATURE 

epigram  that  we  can  imagine.  In  the  following  epigram  it  ex- 
presses with  delicate  irony  the  prevailing  skepticism  toward 
the  myths  of  the  other  world ;  the  poet  stops  before  the 
tombstone,  and  speaks  first  to  it,  then  to  the  dead  be- 
neath it:  '"Does  Charidas  really  rest  beneath  you?'  'If 
you  mean  the  son  of  Arimmas,  of  Cyrene,  yes,  he  does.' 
'Oh  Charidas,  how  are  things  down  below?'  'It's  dark, 
very  dark.'  'And  how  about  getting  back  to  earth?' 
'  That's  a  lie.'  '  And  how  about  Pluto  ? '  '  Fiction.'  '  There's 
no  hope !'  'Well  what  I  have  told  you  is  the  truth,  but  if 
you  prefer  the  pretty  fancy  —  beef  is  cheap  in  Hades.'" 
The  poet  may  abandon  all  thought  of  tombstone  and  gi'ave ; 
the  poem  then  becomes  simply  a  plaintive  commemora- 
tion of  the  death  of  a  friend ;  in  this  case  of  a  brother-poet 
whose  immortal  melodies,  called  nightingales,  are  con- 
trasted with  his  own  mortality :  — 

They  told  me,  Heraclitus,  thou  wert  dead, 

And  then  I  thought  (and  tears  thereon  did  shed), 

How  oft  we  two  talked  down  the  sun ;   but  thou, 

Halicarnassian  friend,  art  ashes  now. 

Yet  live  thy  nightingales  of  song ;   on  those 

Forgetfulness  shall  ne'er  her  hand  impose.^ 

Such  a  contrast  may  be  trite ;  often  the  characterization  is 
subtler.  In  another  epigram,  perhaps  intended  for  the  stone, 
there  seems  to  be  an  extraordinary  fullness  of  suggestion ; 
the  poem  is  interesting,  too,  as  are  many  of  these  poems,  in 
bringing  before  us  a  curious  type  in  Hellenistic  life,  the  man 
who  read  character  from  the  face  :  "The  tomb  of  Eusthenes  : 
reader  of  character,  and  clever  in  seeing  the  mind  through  the 
eye ;  his  mates  gave  him  burial,  generously,  though  he  was 
a  stranger  in  a  strange  land ;  and  the  poet  was  his  loyal 
friend.  All  whereof  has  need,  he  has  in  death,  a  clever 
artist ;  though  poor  and  weak  he  has,  after  all,  mourners  at 

1  Translation  by  H.  N.  Coleridge. 


THE  HELLENISTIC  PERIOD  253 

his  grave."  The  almost  satirical  implication  that  the 
reader  of  character  emploj'ed  his  art  to  choose  friends 
who  would  pa}'  his  funeral  expenses  could  hardly  be  more 
neatly  suggested. 

Hardly  any  phase  of  Hellenistic  life  and  thought  fails  to 
be  expressed  in  the  epigram.  Needless  to  say,  love  in  all  its 
moods  finds  a  prominent  place,  and  here  with  striking  an- 
ticipations of  Elizabethan  manner  and  conceit.  The  com- 
pass of  three  couplets  is  soon  slightly  exceeded,  the  dis- 
tinctive features  of  the  inscribed  epigram  become  less 
inevitable,  and  we  find  ourselves  in  the  midst  of  what  we 
should  call  Ij^ic  poetry.  In  varying  degrees,  in  different 
hands,  and  at  different  stages  in  our  period,  other  types 
exert  their  influence ;  dramatic  form,  the  diction  of  tragedy 
and  song-poetry,  rhetorical  ornament,  all  contribute  to  the 
evolution  of  the  epigram.  The  culmination  of  this  develop- 
ment may  be  illustrated  by  this  poem  of  Meleager  at  the  end 
of  our  epoch  ;  the  rich  Oriental  fancy,  the  rhetorical  coloring 
are  individual  traits,  but  the  poem  may  suggest  the  possi- 
bilities of  the  type.  The  English  version,  however,  is  a  very 
free  expansion  of  the  thought  of  the  Greek  original. 

Now  the  bright  crocus  flames,  and  now 

The  slim  narcissus  takes  the  rain, 
And,  straying  o'er  the  mountain's  brow, 

The  daffodillies  bud  again. 
The  thousand  blossoms  wax  and  wane 

On  wold,  and  heath,  and  fragrant  bough, 

But  fairer  than  the  flowers  art  thou. 
Than  any  growth  of  hill  or  plain. 

Ye  gardens,  cast  your  leafy  crown, 
That  my  Love's  feet  may  tread  it  down, 

Like  lilies  on  the  lilies  set ; 
My  Love,  whose  lips  are  softer  far 
Than  drowsy  poy)py  petals  are, 

And  sweeter  than  the  violet.* 

'  Translation  by  Andrew  Lang. 


254  GREEK  LITERATURE 

We  have  seen  that  the  satirical  epigram  with  a  carefully 
devised  point  deferred  to  the  very  end  of  the  poem  is  only 
one  phase  of  development,  and  a  phase  assiduously  culti- 
vated only  by  a  few  authors  near  the  beginnmg  of  the  Chris- 
tian era.  By  them  possibly  Martial  was  influenced,  and 
through  Martial  the  modern  use  of  the  term  epigram  became 
limited  to  its  present  connotation.  But  in  its  wider  Greek 
sense  the  Hellenistic  epigram  exerted  an  influence  on  Latin 
poetry  much  earlier;  the  shorter  poems  of  Catullus,  some 
odes  of  Horace,  are  epigrams ;  even  the  love-elegies  of  Ovid, 
Tibullus,  and  Propertius  are  by  some  believed  to  be  mere 
expansions  of  epigrams,  but  this  theory  can  hardly  be  applied 
to  all  elegies,  however  convincing  it  may  seem  in  a  few  cases. 

Not  a  few  epigrams  depict  types  from  real  life,  like  the 
reader  of  character  whom  we  met  in  an  epigram  ascribed  to 
Theocritus.  In  some  cases  these  tj^Des  seem  to  come,  not 
directly  from  life,  but  from  Hellenistic  comedies.  The 
comedy  is  primarily  a  product  of  Athens,  unlike  the  other 
literature  of  the  period,  and  is  significant  of  the  change  that 
came  over  this  particular  city-state,  which,  however,  in 
general  yielded  much  less  readily  than  other  parts  of  the 
Hellenistic  world  to  modern  influences.  The  comedy  of  the 
classical  period,  of  Aristophanes,  is  as  innocent  of  structural 
unity  as  the  Homeric  Epic.  Its  subject-matter  is  largely 
of  local  interest,  and  becomes  unintelligible  to  the  modern 
reader  because  of  constant  criticism  of  contemporary  art  and 
politics,  and  the  abuse  of  individuals  in  the  audience  who  are 
insignificant  to  us  ;  in  general,  its  value  is  dependent  upon  the 
full  knowledge  of  the  life  and  thought  of  the  city-state  of 
Athens.  Only  incidentally  does  it  contain  what  is  of  uni- 
versal application  and  interest.  The  New  Comedy  of 
Hellenistic  Athens  concentrates  our  attention  upon  the 
average  citizen,  upon  characters  and  situations  that  are 
common  to  the  world  at  large ;  its  content  is  drawn  from 
the  private  life  of  the  period ;   it  is  realistic,  no  longer  fan- 


THE  HELLENISTIC  PERIOD  255 

tastic ;  its  form  is  coherent  and  forecasts  more  plainly  than 
Euripidean  tragedy  the  modern  five-act  play.  The  plots 
are  undoubtedly  monotonous ;  the  identification  of  lost 
children  —  a  theme  derived  from  Euripidean  tragedy, 
the  intriguing  of  slaves  against  their  masters,  recur  with 
tedious  regularity;  the  characters  are  repeated  from  play 
to  play  —  the  sentimental  son,  the  stern  father,  the  faithless 
slave-dealer,  the  braggart  soldier,  the  courtezan,  now  mer- 
cenary, now  faithful  and  considerate ;  but  the  delineation 
of  character  in  Menander's  hands  must  have  been  varied 
and  delicate.  The  ethical  standards  are  low,  the  social 
conditions  unpleasing;  but  much  of  the  repulsive  side  of 
the  New  Comedy  is  not,  at  least  to  the  extent  in  which  it 
appears  in  the  plays,  a  faithful  reproduction  of  contem- 
porary Greek  life ;  the  nature  of  the  plots,  the  conventions 
of  the  stage,  account  for  the  low  moral  standards,  for  the 
prominence  of  the  demi-monde :  the  plot  of  intrigue  in- 
evitably brings  with  it  cunning  and  rascality ;  the  woman  of 
respectability  in  actual  life  was  confined  to  the  house ;  the 
stage-setting,  therefore,  which  excludes  interior  scenes  by 
regularly  representing  the  city-street  as  the  foreground  of 
the  action,  more  easily  admits  as  heroine  the  only  woman  in 
contemporary  society  who  has  free  access  to  the  street.^ 
It  is,  however,  unquestionably  true  that  we  should  readily 
sacrifice  all  the  newly  discovered  fragments  of  Menander, 
all  the  twenty-six  plays  of  Plautus  and  Terence  in  Latin, 
which  are  but  adaptations  of  Hellenistic  comedies,  rather 
than  lose  the  Birds  or  the  Frogs  of  Aristophanes.  The 
significance  of  this  type  is  not  in  its  distinction,  in  any 
high  literary  value,  but  in  the  simple  fact  that  in  so  far 
as  there  is  any  classical  element  in  Moliere  and  his  kind, 
Moliere  is  ultimately  Menander  and  not  Aristophanes,  that 
Hellenistic  comedy  is  the  initial  stage  in  extant  classical 

•  For  an  account  of  social  conditions  at  Athens  in  .the  Hellenistic  period, 
of.  W.  S.  Ferguson,  Hellenistic  Athena  (London,  1911),  pp.  65  S. 


256  GREEK  LITERATURE 

literature  of  the  development  that  leads  to  the  modern 
comedy  of  manners  and  especially  of  intrigue.  Perhaps  it 
would  be  too  much  to  maintain  that  this  comedy  is  a  creation 
of  the  age  in  which  it  first  appears  so  prominently,  although 
there  seems  to  be  current  a  notion  that  Menandrian  comedy 
was  evolved  from  Aristophanic  comedy  by  omitting  the 
choral  element  and  eliminating  personal  criticism.  Such 
an  evolution  is  difficult  to  imagine ;  the  comedy  of  manners 
flourished  at  least  in  Sicily  even  before  the  time  of  Aris- 
tophanes ;  at  Athens  in  the  fifth  century  it  was  to  a  consider- 
able extent  submerged  by  the  local  fantastic  comedy ;  in 
the  Hellenistic  period  new  conditions  call  it  forth  into  new 
life ;  it  did  not  emerge  without  being  modified,  and  no  doubt 
improved,  and  somewhat  under  the  influence  of  Euripidean 
tragedy ;  but  it  is  a  regeneration,  rather  than  a  new  crea- 
tion.^ 

Closely  related  to  comedy  is  the  type  of  poetry  known  to 
the  ancients  as  the  mime ;  it  betrays  in  its  name  its  chief 
purpose  —  direct  imitation.  Back  of  the  literary  form  which 
it  assumes  in  our  period  are  cruder  phases  that  before  and 
during  the  Hellenistic  period  served  to  entertain  the  people, 
very  much  as  the  music-hall  song  and  the  monologue  of  the 
vaudeville  show  to-day ;  as  recitation  or  song  accompanied 
by  dramatic  action  these  less  artistic  forms  satisfied  a  demand 
for  mere  amusement.  Out  of  these  developed  a  recitation, 
probably  by  the  poet  himself,  in  which,  at  least  in  the  hands 
of  Theocritus,  perhaps  under  the  influence  of  epic  —  also 
intended  for  recitation  —  the  verse  was  regularly  the  hex- 
ameter ;  somewhat  nearer  the  dramatic  form  are  the  mimes 
of  Herondas  in  the  iambic  verse  once  cultivated  by  the  early 
poet  Hipponax.     Like  the  comedy,  only  in  much  shorter 

1  The  content  and  the  form  of  the  New  Comedy  have  been  fully  treated 
by  Legrand,  Daos :  Tableau  de  la  comedie  grecque  pendant  la  periode  dite  nou- 
velle,  Lyon  et  Paris,  1910. 

The  new  fragment^  of  Menander  are  translated  by  Unus  Multorum, 
Oxford  and  London,  1909. 


THE  HELLENISTIC  PERIOD  257 

compass,  the  mime  reproduced  scenes  from  private  life. 
Like  the  comedy,  too,  it  lent  itself  readily  to  the  portrayal  of 
character  types. 

The  work  of  Herondas,  fully  known  to  us  only  since  the 
year  1891,  reveals  an  accurate  observation  and  a  clearness  of 
portrayal  that  his  more  famous  contemporary  Theocritus 
cannot  equal.  But  the  clearness  is  that  of  photography; 
there  is  no  sense  of  proportion,  of  discrimination ;  the  char- 
acters are  drawn  with  a  heavy  hand,  with  extravagance, 
with  repellent  realism.  Yet  there  is  hardly  anything  else 
in  Greek  literature  Avhich  so  easily  convinces  the  reader  that 
the  Greeks,  however  extraordinary,  were  thoroughly  human. 
The  Penelope  of  the  first  mime,  withstanding  the  insinuating 
suggestions  of  her  caller  who  would  weaken  her  loyalty  to 
her  absent  husband ;  the  unsympathetic  mother,  incorrigible 
schoolboy,  and  relentless  pedagogue  of  the  third  mime;  the 
ladies  in  the  temple  of  Aesculapius  admiring  with  all  the 
"bromides"  of  the  untutored  art-critic  the  statuary  before 
them;  the  shoemaker  exploiting  his  wares  and  browbeating 
his  customers  —  how  modern  his  obsequious  courtesy  as 
he  exclaims  "I  cannot  have  you  leave  the  shop,  ladies,  until 
you  are  thoroughly  satisfied!" — these  are  the  average 
citizen  in  all  his  commonplaceness.  They  serve  as  a  not 
unpleasant  antithesis  to  the  carefully  fostered  notions  of 
Greek  sanemindedness.^ 

In  Theocritus  one  finds  once  more,  and  with  peculiar 
pleasure  —  for  the  relief  furnished  by  Herondas  is  only  a 
temporary  satisfaction  —  the  recurrence  of  the  old  Greek 
refinement  and  taste.  Born  probably  in  Sicily  in  the  midst 
of  a  peasantry  who  possessed,  in  spite  of  their  humble  occu- 
pations, an  unusual  degree  of  poetic  imagination,  and  an 
unusual  appreciation  of  the  beauties  of  external  nature,  the 
poet's  own  endowments  found  a  natural  outlet  in  depicting 

1  The  mimes  have  been  translated  into  verse  by  Sharpley,  A  Realist  of  the 
Aegean,  London,  1906. 
8 


258  GREEK  LITERATURE 

this  peasantry  with  all  simplicity  and  charm,  their  pastoral 
life,  their  romantic  adventures,  their  store  of  legends. 
With  absolute  naturalness  they  come  before  us :  the  keen- 
witted Battus,  the  bumpkin  Corydon,  at  the  foot  of  the  hill 
tending  their  sheep  and  goats,  Battus  bantering  Corydon 
the  while  with  vacant  gawping  seriousness ;  their  interest 
in  their  flocks,  in  their  sweethearts,  interrupted  by  an  occa- 
sional recalcitrant  goat  or  a  thorn  that  pricks  Battus's  foot 
—  "  How  tiny  a  thorn,  and  yet  how  big  a  man  it  overcomes," 
says  Battus  in  the  humorous  moralizing  tone  of  his  class, 
and  Corydon  is  stupidly  unconscious  of  the  humor ;  the 
flocks  have  reached  the  hilltop,  Battus  and  Corydon  have 
crossed  it  and  passed  out  of  our  ken.  A  charming  picture, 
all  true,  but  sweet  and  wholesome ;  to-morrow,  we  think, 
we  shall  seek  them  out  again  on  the  same  hillside  and  hear 
their  new  experiences,  their  new  pastoral  songs.  There  is 
no  sense  of  art,  of  poetry,  only  a  refreshing  glimpse  of  simple 
folk,  deep  draughts  of  fresh  air,  warmed  by  the  Sicilian  sun, 
with  a  background  of  bright  flowers,  the  cool  shade  of  trees, 
and  murmuring  streams. 

Naive,  the  casual  reader  says,  and  he  is  excusable ;  in 
fact,  the  art  is  there,  and  quite  conscious  art.  Presently  the 
art  comes  perilously  near  to  artificiality.  In  another  poem 
realism  becomes  a  mere  framework  in  which  to  set  legendary 
material ;  in  still  another  the  same  framework  sets  off,  not 
real  herdsmen,  but  poets  masquerading  as  herdsmen.  So 
in  these  pastoral  mimes  of  Theocritus  we  have  in  micro- 
scopic form  the  development  of  what  we  call  the  pastoral, 
from  apparent  artlessness  to  obtrusive  artificiality.  Once 
the  poet  Theocritus  has  introduced  himself  and  his  poet- 
friends  disguised  as  herdsmen  into  the  seventh  poem,  it  is 
easier  for  Vergil  to  bring  into  his  Eclogues  literary  men  and 
patrons  of  literature ;  once  the  future  emperor,  Augustus, 
has  been  celebrated  in  Vergil's  pastoral  verse,  the  poets  of 
the  early  empire  under  new  social  and  political  conditions 


THE  HELLENISTIC  PERIOD  259 

easily  make  of  the  pastoral  a  court  poem ;  the  court  of 
Charles  the  Great  resurrects,  or  should  we  say,  exhumes  it. 
The  intrusion  of  alien  elements  once  established,  the  pas- 
toral becomes  a  mere  mold  in  which  to  cast  moral  and 
political  satire,  with  courtiers,  or  priests,  or  bishops  as 
the  masqueraders.  From  artistic  realism  to  the  hollowest 
artificiality,  from  Theocritus  through  Vergil  and  Calpurnius 
and  Charles's  courtiers  to  Petrarch  and  the  Mantuan  and 
Marot  and  Spenser,  the  pastoral  passes  —  a  singular  instance 
of  the  almost  unbroken  continuity  of  a  type  created  in  the 
Hellenistic  period. 

To  the  Greek,  the  pastoral  was  merely  the  mime  of  country 
life.  Theocritus  may  have  contributed  much  to  its  artistic 
form,  especially  in  the  choice  of  metrical  form,  but  the  mime 
in  prose  had  already  been  cultivated  by  his  fellow-country- 
man, Sophron,  in  the  fifth  century,  and  to  him  Theocritus 
certainly  owed  something.  Yet  there  is  an  individuality 
in  the  art  of  the  poet  that  inclines  us  to  grant  him  a  high 
degree  of  creative  power.  This  art  appears  most  happily  in 
his  handling  of  legendary  material.  The  legend  of  Daphnis 
had  been  a  simple  Sicilian  folk-tale ;  the  folk-tale  told  of 
Daphnis's  love-affair  with  a  nymph  who  made  him  promise 
under  heavy  penalty  that  he  would  never  indulge  love  for  a 
mortal  woman ;  Daphnis  broke  his  vow  and  was  blinded. 
In  Theocritus  the  tale  is  modified,  probably  under  the  influ- 
ence of  contemporary  romantic  fiction :  Daphnis,  ideal 
herdsman,  has  sworn  never  to  yield  to  love  of  woman ;  this 
oath  has  excited  the  wrath  of  Aphrodite,  who  stimulates  in 
him  love  for  a  maiden,  a  love  apparently  requited,  for  the 
maiden  seeks  him  through  bush  and  brier;  but  Daphnis, 
true  to  his  vow,  avoids  her  and  chooses  to  pine  away  with 
his  love  unsatisfied.  We  are  in  no  position  to  know  whether 
the  poet  is  to  be  credited  with  this  modification,  but  his  art 
appears  in  the  handling  of  the  theme.  The  theme  itself  is 
presented  in  a  song  l)y  one  of  two  herdsmen  in  response  to 


260  GREEK  LITERATURE 

the  urgent  entreaty  of  his  fellow ;  in  this  preHminary  conver- 
sation the  poet  reveals  the  setting  with  his  usual  luxury  of 
picturesque  detail ;  the  song  itself  is  a  succession  of  stanzas 
with  changing  refrain,  the  style  now  lyrical,  now  dramatic. 
But  the  poet's  skill  is  chiefly  shown  in  choosing  with  truly 
Sophoclean  art  the  final  chapter  of  the  story,  the  death-scene, 
as  the  centre  of  the  action ;  all  nature  is  mourning  the  loss 
of  its  favorite ;  the  rustic  divinities  come  to  sympathize, 
to  comfort ;  even  Aphrodite  herself  comes  to  exult,  but 
remains  to  pity,  and  to  regret  her  vengeful  spirit.  Through 
conversation  between  the  herdsman  and  the  divinities,  the 
poet  beautifully  suggests  the  situation,  gradually  unfolding 
the  suffering  and  its  cause,  slowly  stimulating  our  curiosity, 
awakening  our  sympathy,  never  gratifying  us  with  explicit 
information,  but  leading  us  on  to  the  truth  with  delicate 
hints  and  using  dialogue  and  description  to  enrich  our  knowl- 
edge of  the  hero's  interests,  his  occupation,  his  stubborn 
will,  his  intimacy  with  Pan,  and  the  pathos  of  his  case ;  and 
in  the  background  are  the  creatures  of  wood  and  field  with 
despairing  cries  mourning  the  loss  of  him. 

Such  a  singularly  graceful  bit  of  imaginative  art  could 
hardly  be  without  effect  upon  later  poets.  So,  some  genera- 
tions later,  we  find  the  poet  Bion  retaining  the  background 
of  sympathetic  nature,  keeping  much  of  the  rich  pathos  of 
the  situation,  of  the  graceful  ornament  of  external  form,  but 
putting  in  the  foreground  new  characters — Aphrodite  herself 
and  her  lover,  the  handsome  Adonis,  slain  by  the  wild  boar 
in  his  reckless  enjoyment  of  the  chase.  But  the  situation  is 
less  simple  ;  the  reader  cannot  fully  appreciate  the  new  poem 
without  knowing  more  than  the  poem  reveals ;  yet  it  is 
interesting  to  see  how  much  nearer  to  our  modern  taste  the 
copiousness  of  detail,  the  luxury  of  emotional  suggestion, 
bring  this  poem  of  the  latter  end  of  the  Hellenistic  period. 
In  the  East  was  celebrated  a  festival  in  honor  of  Adonis; 
he  and  his  divine  mistress  Aphrodite  were  represented  in 


THE  HELLENISTIC   PERIOD  261 

efEg>'  laid  out  upon  richly  ornamented  couches  beneath  an 
arbor  about  which  were  disposed  figures  of  the  little  Cupids. 
Associated  more  or  less  with  the  ceremony  was  the  legend 
itself  of  the  goddess's  grief  over  the  loss  of  her  lover.  The 
poet  again  constructs  his  poem  in  stanzas  with  recurrent 
refrain,  but  there  is  no  framework  of  pastoral  realism,  only 
bits  of  pastoral  suggestion ;  the  poem  is  no  longer  a  pastoral 
at  all,  but  from  a  modern  standpoint  lyrical.  Yet  to  call 
it  lyrical  quite  misrepresents  it :  the  poet  in  his  stanzas 
brings  one  picture  after  another  before  us  without  ever 
intruding  himself ;  one  moment  we  are  by  the  side  of  Adonis 
in  the  open,  the  next  moment  we  are  recalled  to  the  effigies 
beneath  the  green  canopy  at  the  festival ;  the  refrain  sets 
off  the  different  pictures,  marks  the  changes  of  mood ;  the 
form  is  that  of  song,  but  the  poem  is  not  a  song.^  A 
stanza  or  two  from  Mrs.  Browning's  very  uneven  translation 
only  faintly  suggests  this  singularly  modern  poem : 

Woe,  Woe  !     Cytherea  !     Adonis  is  dead. 

She  wept  tear  after  tear  with  the  blood  that  was  shed ; 

And  both  turned  into  flowers  for  the  earth's  garden-close ; 

Her  tears  to  the  windflower,  his  blood  to  the  rose. 

I  mourn  for  Adonis  —  Adonis  is  dead, 

Weep  no  more  in  the  woods,  Cytherea,  thy  lover  1 
So,  well ;   make  a  place  for  his  corse  in  thy  bed, 

With  the  purples  thou  sleepest  in,  under  and  over, 
He's  fair  though  a  corse  —  a  fair  corse,  like  a  sleeper  — 

Lay  him  soft  in  the  silks  he  had  pleasure  to  fold, 
When,  beside  thee  at  night,  holy  dreams  deep  and  deeper 

Inclosed  his  young  life  on  the  couch  made  of  gold  ! 
Love  him  still,  poor  Adonis  !   cast  on  him  together 

The  crowns  and  the  flowers  !     Since  he  died  from  the  place, 
Why  let  all  die  with  him  —  let  the  blossoms  go  wither ; 

Rain  myrtles  and  olive-buds  down  on  his  face : 
Rain  the  myrrh  down,  let  all  that  is  best  fall  a-pining. 

For  the  myrrh  of  his  life  from  thy  keeping  is  swept ! 

'  The  best  appreciation  of  Bion's  poem  is  contained  in  the  introduction 
of  Wilamowitz,  Bion  von  Smyrna:   Adonis,  Berlin,  1900. 


262  GREEK  LITERATURE 

The  author  of  this  poem  was  himself  celebrated  by  a  devoted 
follower  in  a  third  version  of  the  theme ;  in  this  poem,  in 
which  all  the  virtues  of  the  work  of  Theocritus  and  Bion  are 
carried  to  ridiculous  excess  and  become  vices,  there  is  little 
to  commend.  But  there  was  something  fitting  in  commemo- 
rating the  poet  Bion  in  a  threnody  modelled  after  the 
song  of  Daphnis,  the  pastoral  singer.  Modern  imitations 
have  usually  adhered  to  this  much  of  the  setting ;  Milton 
in  his  Lycidas  mourns  the  death  of  his  poet-friend  King, 
Shelley  in  his  Adonais  the  death  of  Keats,  and  Arnold  in 
his  Thyrsis  the  death  of  Clough.  There  is  no  more  signifi- 
cant comparison  than  that  between  the  passage  of  Bion's 
poem  in  which  the  Cupids  in  turn  bring  their  offerings, 
render  their  final  service  to  Adonis,  and  the  ninth  and  follow- 
ing sections  of  Shelley's  Adonais,  in  which  "the  quick 
dreams,  the  winged  ministers  of  thought"  flit  about  their 
loved  poet.  The  picture  in  Bion  is  thoroughly  Hellen- 
istic, is  modern;  yet  the  modern  poet  elaborates  with  a 
wealth  of  imagination  and  feeling  that  is  quite  beyond  the 
reach  of  Bion ;  and  Shelley  with  extraordinary  power  culls 
all  the  best  from  Theocritus,  Bion,  and  Bion's  unknown 
admirer,  and  weaves  it  all  into  a  new  masterpiece. 

Theocritus  did  not  confine  himself  to  pastoral  mimes.  The 
life  of  the  city  with  all  its  tragedy  and  bustling  activity  made 
its  appeal.  The  jealous  lover,  the  strenuous  and  the  timid 
Syracusan  ladies  in  Alexandria,  he  presents  in  different 
degrees  of  realism.  His  masterpiece,  and  perhaps  the  most 
characteristic  product  of  the  Hellenistic  period,  is  the  second 
mime,i  in  which  alone  of  all  his  poems  he  reveals  his  power 
of  expressing  strong  emotion.  The  theme  itself  is  distinctly 
Hellenistic  ;  to  be  sure  the  story  of  the  abandoned  sweetheart 
is  perennial,  but  it  may  be  doubted  if  it  could  easily  have 

1  This  poem  is  in  some  respects  comparable  to  Victor  Hugo's  Guitare, 
which  may  be  found  in  A  Book  of  Greek  Verse  by  Walter  Headlam  (Cam- 
bridge, 1907),  p.  184. 


THE  HELLENISTIC   PERIOD  263 

won  its  way  into  poetry  of  the  classical  period.  If  we 
are  reminded  that  Medea  in  Euripides's  tragedy  is  the 
same  sort  of  heroine,  we  may  retort  that  Euripides  is  Hellen- 
istic ;  or  better  still  we  may  note  that  there  is  a  significant 
difference  between  the  heroine  of  the  tragedy  and  the  heroine 
of  the  mime,  and  in  that  difference  lies  the  essential  Hellen- 
istic element :  Theocritus  feels  no  need  to  dignify  his  theme 
by  elevating  his  heroine;  she  is  no  barbaric  queen,  but 
onh^  an  average  woman.  It  is  true  that  the  type  of  liter- 
ature chosen  makes  it  easier  to  portray  the  middle  or  low- 
est class,  but  just  therein  we  touch  again  the  Hellenistic 
trait :  our  period  creates  and  develops  types  of  poetry 
that  are  free  from  the  conventions  of  epic  and  tragedy, 
that  find  room  for  the  average  citizen,  even  for  the  com- 
monplace, but  not  without  making  the  new  subject  worthy 
of  literary  treatment.  I  have  spoken  in  passing  of  cruder 
forms  of  the  mime  that  correspond  to  our  music-hall  ballad 
and  monologue.  One  of  these  the  papyri  have  preserved 
for  us,  and  in  connection  with  the  second  mime  of  Theoc- 
ritus it  is  interesting  to  note  that  "The  Maid's  Lament," 
as  we  call  this  music-hall  song,  is  a  solo  sung  by  an 
abandoned  sweetheart  appealing  to  the  night  and  the  stars 
in  her  desperation  as  does  Theocritus's  heroine. 

But  again,  as  in  the  song  of  Daphnis,  the  art  of  this  sec- 
ond mime  of  Theocritus  is  in  the  elaboration  as  much  as 
in  the  choice  of  the  situation.  The  mime  is  dramatic,  as 
most  of  these  poems  are ;  the  form  is  a  monologue,  though 
a  servant  is  present  during  the  earlier  part  of  the  action, 
and  to  her  the  heroine  addresses  a  few  commands.  Again 
the  final  act  of  the  tragedy  is  chosen  as  in  the  story  of  Daph- 
nis. The  scene,  as  the  poet  helps  us  visualize  it,  is  out 
of  doors,  a  night  scene.  In  the  dim  light  we  discern  the 
outlines  of  the  cauldron,  of  the  woman  standing  beside 
it ;  we  hear  her  calling  for  the  magic  herbs  to  burn  in  the 
flame ;    it  is  a  magic  rite  to  win  back  the  lover  who  has 


264  GREEK  LITERATURE 

betrayed  and  left  her.  She  tells  us  just  enough  in  her  first 
words  to  pique  our  curiosity,  to  win  our  sympathy.  Then 
begins  her  invocation  of  the  moon,  of  Hecate,  with  all 
the  grim  details  that  increase  the  uncanniness  of  the  situ- 
ation. In  stanzas  with  a  weird  refrain  she  drops  in  the 
cauldron  one  after  another  the  herbs,  melts  the  wax  effigy 
of  her  lover,  and  whirls  the  magic  wheel;  here  and  there 
come  details  to  inform  us  or  to  deepen  the  pathos  :  — 

Hushed  are  the  voices  of  the  winds  and  seas ; 
But  O  not  hushed  the  voice  of  my  despair. 
He  burns  my  being  up,  who  left  me  here 
No  wife,  no  maiden,  in  my  misery. 

Turn,  magic  wheel,  draw  homeward  him  I  love. 

As  yet  her  servant  has  stood  waiting  upon  her;  now  the 
woman  sends  her  to  smear  the  lintel  of  the  lover's  door. 
Thus  left  alone  she  breaks  forth  into  stanzas  revealing  in 
narrative  monologue  her  whole  tragic  experience,  each 
stanza  set  off  by  a  new  refrain :  — 

Bethink  thee,  mistress  Moon,  whence  came  my  love. 

The  narrative  is  strongly  realistic  and  admirably  in  har- 
mony with  the  character  and  situation.  She  remembers, 
as  the  psychologist  tells  us  she  should  remember,  every  detail 
of  the  first  meeting,  even  the  dress  she  wore,  the  fever  of 
love  with  all  the  physical  symptoms,  the  despair,  the  sum- 
mons to  her  lover,  his  fair  speech,  and  the  discovery  of 
his  faithlessness,  all  with  rapidity  in  spite  of  the  fullness 
of  detail.  The  characterization  is  admirable ;  the  lover's 
words  immediately  reveal  the  confident  young  athlete, 
and  in  their  fulsomeness  readily  prepare  us  for  the  issue ; 
the  woman's  changing  moods  in  the  changing  stages  of  the 
narrative  are  true  and  convincing.  The  poet  wisely  leaves 
us  in  suspense  as  to  the  issue :  his  Roman  imitator's  taste 
was  not  so  sure. 


THE  HELLENISTIC  PERIOD  265 

Theocritus  wrote  other  poems  than  the  mimes.  He  did  not 
stay  permanently  in  Sicily  ;  he  travelled  to  Cos,  the  birthplace 
of  Herondas ;  there  he  knew  other  great  poets  of  the  pe- 
riod ;  he  went  further  to  Alexandria,  seeking  the  court  of 
the  Ptolemies,  as  every  literary  man  was  likely  to  do  sooner 
or  later.  His  experience  grew,  his  subjects  and  his  art 
changed,  not  always  for  the  better.  He  is  not  above  taw- 
dry flattery  of  crowned  heads ;  he  describes  a  boxing-match 
with  the  brutal  realism  of  a  sporting  editor;  but  all  in  all 
the  final  impression  is  that  left  by  the  pastoral  and  city 
mimes,  an  impression  of  delicacy  and  grace  and  no  little 
strength  withal,  little  depth  of  feeling  or  rather  little  power 
to  suggest  strong  emotion  save  in  one  poem,  but  a  sweet 
wholesomeness  and  genial  humor  that  have  always  redeemed 
the  Hellenistic  period  from  total  neglect  by  lovers  of  good 
literature.^ 

Other  types  of  poetry  are  less  significant  to  the  modern 
reader,  or  are  difficult  to  reconstruct  from  the  fragmen- 
tary remains.  Hellenistic  tragedy  clung  to  the  myths 
of  the  classical  drama.  There  is  little  evidence  of  any 
attempt,  as  in  comedy,  to  make  contemporary  social  con- 
ditions the  material  of  tragedy.  Rhetoric,  and  vagaries 
in  metre  and  music,  probably  served  as  ornament,  and 
rather  tawdry  ornament,  of  the  dry  skeleton  of  myth.  A 
development  of  form  more  closely  approximating  the  five- 
act  play  may  be  guessed.  Euripidean  influence  was  doubtless 
predominant,  but  the  precise  effect  of  that  influence  can  only 
be  vaguely  surmised.  Even  in  the  Latin  tragedies  of  Seneca 
the  Hellenistic  elements  cannot  easily  be  discriminated. 

Hellenistic  literature  is  a  natural  outgrowth  of  social  con- 
ditions ;    it  is  a  significant  literature,  though  not  possessed 

•  Translations  into  prose  of  Theocritus,  Bion,  and  Moschus  may  be  found 
in  Andrew.  Lang,  Theocritus,  Bion,  and  Moschus,  second  edition,  London, 
1889  ;  of  Theocritus  into  verse  by  Charles  Stuart  Calverley  in  hia  Complete 
Works  (published  by  G.  Boll  and  Sous,  Loudon,  1901). 


266  GREEK  LITERATURE 

of  the  high  distinction  of  the  best  Hellenic  product.  The 
modern  reader  may  properly  discover  this  significance  to 
some  extent  in  the  fact  that  Tennyson  found  Theocritus  ^ 
congenial,  that  William  Morris  sought  a  theme  in  the 
epic  of  Apollonius,  that  Milton  and  Shelley  and  Arnold 
were  moved  by  the  tragic  fate  of  Daphnis,  that  Rossetti's 
Sister  Helen  is  a  riddle  partially  solved  by  Theocritus' 
second  idyl,  that  many  a  Hellenistic  epigram  has  ap- 
pealed to  various  poets  of  all  ages  and  countries.  But 
a  full  appreciation  of  modern  literature  will  lead  to  a  less 
superficial  estimate  of  such  significance.  The  period  effects 
distinct  changes  in  the  content  and  form  of  classical  litera- 
ture; these  changes  bring  the  current  of  anCient  literature 
nearer  the  main  stream  of  modern  literature.  The  perma- 
nence of  the  new  tendencies  is  due  not  to  the  Hellenistic 
Greeks  but  to  the  Romans  who  conquered  them.  In  the 
words  of  the  latest  essayist  ^  on  this  theme :  "As  re- 
gards the  progress  of  poetry,  what  gives  the  age  its  mean- 
ing is  not  that  it  was  an  age  of  decadence ;  it  is  that  it  was 
an  age  of  difficult  and  delayed  germination.  The  seeds 
of  new  life  were  under  the  surface.  Out  of  a  silver  age, 
like  that  of  Latin  poetry  under  the  Empire,  nothing  comes  ; 
it  only  dwindles  away  slowly  and  dies.  But  out  of  Alexan- 
drianism  came,  with  the  touch  of  a  new  life  in  a  new  lan- 
guage, Latin  poetry,"  and  I  may  add,  much  of  the  form 
and  content  of  Latin  prose. 

Henry  W.  Prescott. 

1  On  the  influence  of  Theocritus,  cf.  Kerlin,  Theocritus  in  English  Litera- 
ture, Lynchburg,  1910 ;  Stedman,  Tennyson  and  Theocritus,-  in  Atlantic 
Monthly,  XXVIII,  513  S. 

2  Mackail,  Lectures  on  Greek  Poetry  (London,  1910)  ;  pp.  177-272  contain 
interesting  chapters  on  Theocritus,  Apollonius,  and  Alexandrianism. 


GREEK   INFLUENCE   UPON   LATIN   LITERATURE 

No  serious  student  of  Latin  literature  can  fail  to  remark, 
very  early  in  his  study,  the  large  number  of  paths  which 
lead  directly  back  to  Greece  and  to  the  literature  of  Greece. 
It  is  almost  a  truism  of  criticism,  even  more  in  need  of  em- 
phasis to-day  than  ever  before,  that  to  him  who  has  no 
knowledge  of  Greek  literature,  Latin  literature  is  a  labyrinth 
without  a  thread.  This  fact  would  be  borne  in  upon  him  by 
the  contents  of  the  Latin  authors,  even  if  he  had  no  direct 
testimony  from  the  Romans  themselves.  But  in  reality 
they  were  the  first  to  acknowledge  without  reserve  their 
indebtedness  to  Greece.  Horace  expressed  this  in  a  phrase 
which  immediately  became  classic  :  — 

"Greece,  conquered  Greece,  her  conqueror  subdued, 
And  clownish  Latium  with  her  arts  imbued." 

But  this  was  only  a  general  acknowledgment  without  regard 
to  the  debt  to  individual  authors.  Plautus  and  Terence  ex- 
plained in  their  prologues  that  they  had  drawn  largely  upon 
the  New  Greek  Comedy.  Ennius  claimed  to  be  the  rein- 
carnation of  Homer.  Vergil  referred  continually  in  his 
Bucolics  to  the  Sicilian  Muse  of  Theocritus,  and  in  the 
Georgics  to  the  Ascraean  bard,  Hesiod.  Lucretius  was  proud 
of  his  debt  to  Epicurus.  Horace  himself  acknowledged 
the  influence  of  the  poets  of  the  Old  Greek  Comedy.  Proi)or- 
tius  boasted  that  he  was  the  Roman  Callimachus,  while 
Cicero  acknowledged  everywhere,  particularly  in  his  philo- 
sophical works,  the  utter  dependence  of  Latin  upon  Greek. 
Quintilian  in  his  famous  survey  of  Latin  literature  does  in- 

267 


V 


268  GREEK  LITERATURE 

deed  rejoice  that  one  department  at  least  is  wholly  Roman, 
namely  Satire,  but  in  this  he  can  be  referring  only  to  the 
form,  for  Horace  had  long  before  asserted  the  dependence  of 
Lucilius  upon  the  Old  Comedy. 

During  the  long  darkness  which  brooded  over  the  world 
from  the  sixth  to  the  thirteenth  centuries  this  dependence  of 
Latin  literature  upon  Greece  was  lost  sight  of  completely ; 
for  to  the  Western  world  antiquity  meant  Rome  alone  and 
literature  meant  Latin.  Greek  influence  was,  it  is  true,  not 
wholly  absent,  but  it  was  the  influence  principally  of  phi- 
losophy, mathematics,  and  natural  science,  and  it  was  exerted 
through  the  medium  of  Latin  translations.  The  revival 
of  learning  brought  again  the  possibility  as  well  as  the 
spirit  of  comparison,  and  scholars  began  at  once  to  re- 
mark the  great  amount  of  Greek  in  Latin.  Some  German 
scholars  in  particular  became  so  impressed  by  this  influence 
that  they  came  to  regard  Latin  merely  as  a  medium  for  the 
tradition  of  Greek  culture,  and  Latin  literature  in  itself  as 
practically  non-existent,  while  even  those  who  did  not  go  so 
far  acquiesced  in  the  view  that  Latin  literature  was  a  reflec- 
tion of  Greek,  showing  some  power  in  a  few  respects,  but 
with  no  national  genius  and  no  national  form. 

This  controversy  as  to  the  merits  of  Latin  versus  Greek 
actually  began  very  early.  Upon  the  publication  of  the 
Aeneid  of  Vergil,  envious  critics  began  at  once  to  cry  down  the 
new  poet  as  a  plagiarist  of  Greek  motif  and  even  of  Greek 
expression.  Succeeding  critics,  as  late  as  the  fourth  century, 
busied  themselves  with  compiling  lists  of  Vergil's  borrowings 
from  Homer  and  other  poets,  quite  oblivious  of  the  truth  of 
Vergil's  own  remark,  when  twitted  with  this  fault,  that,  if 
his  detractors  would  try  it,  they  would  find  it  easier  to  steal 
his  club  from  Hercules  than  a  line  from  Homer. 

More  recently  the  application  of  the  spirit  of  scientific 
reasonableness  has  tended  to  qualify  this  wholesale  depre- 
ciation of  Latin  originality,  and  a  sounder  view  has  come  to 


GREECE  AND  ROME  269 

prevail  in  regard  to  the  relative  value  of  the  Greek  and 
Roman  elements  in  Latin  literature.  It  is  my  purpose  to 
trace,  as  far  as  is  possible  in  the  time  at  command,  the  de- 
velopment of  the  chief  departments  of  Latin  literature,  and 
to  show  how  much  of  the  Greek  effect  is  due  to  the  pouring 
of  Greek  fountains  into  an  ever  broadening  but  always 
Roman  stream. 

Latin  literature  is  said  to  begin  with  the  presentation 
about  the  year  240  B.C.  of  a  play  transfused  from  Greek 
originals  by  a  certain  tivius  Andronicus,  a  Tarentine  Greek, 
who  bears  the  proud  title  of  the  "  Father  of  Latin  literature." 
But,  according  to  tradition,  when  this  play  of  Livius  was 
presented,  the  city  of  Rome  had  been  in  existence  for  five 
hundred  years.  What  had  happened  during  those  five  hun- 
dred years  ?  Had  there  been  no  literary  beginnings  at  all  ? 
Without  attempting  to  sketch  the  history  of  this  period  it 
may  be  said  that  the  general  course  of  development  is  clear. 
A  small  community  on  the  Tiber,  probably  of  various  racial 
elements,  devoted  mainly  to  agricultural  pursuits,  but  with 
an  innate  commercial  tendency,  was  forced  to  maintain  a 
continual  struggle  with  surrounding  tribes  for  existence. 
The  great  advantages  of  its  location  as  a  trading  centre  drew 
people  to  it  from  many  quarters,  but  this  very  expansion 
caused  many  enmities,  and  more  than  once  the  community 
was  compelled  to  leave  its  home  at  the  mercy  of  the  attack- 
ing force,  whether  Italian  or  Gallic.  The  extension  of  the 
Roman  hegemony  was  very  gradual,  and  it  was  three 
hundred  years  or  more  before  the  Roman  name  penetrated 
across  the  Adriatic  Sea,  or  the  Roman  came  into  contact 
with  the  Greek  outposts  which  had  been  planted  along  the 
coasts  of  lower  Italy  and  the  adjoining  island  of  Sicily.  Still 
another  century  was  to  elapse  before  the  growing  city  dared 
to  tempt  the  gods  of  the  sea  in  ships  —  a  measure  not  of 
peace  but  of  war,  and  one  which  was  destined  to  open  the 
way  for  a  very  rapid  development. 


270  GREEK  LITERATURE 

The  history  of  these  centuries  shows  httle  or  no  place 
for  any  attention  to  letters.  They  thrive  not  well  within  an 
armed  camp,  nor  in  the  busy  hum  of  the  market-place,  and 
during  all  this  period  Rome  was  but  a  combination  of  camp 
and  market-place.  The  parallel  between  the  Roman  state 
and  that  of  Sparta  has  often  been  made ;  in  fact  the  charac- 
teristics are  much  the  same.  Life  in  both  was  an  unending 
round  of  the  sterner  duties,  and  in  both  this  left  scant  room 
for  the  smiling  arts  of  culture.  The  history  of  Greek  litera- 
ture shows  no  great  Spartan  author  'during  a  period  much 
longer  than  these  five  hundred  years  of  Roman  incubation, 
and  we  should  accordingly  not  be  surprised  at  even  a  total 
absence  of  literary  tendency  in  the  Roman  state.  But  there 
is  no  such  total  absence.  There  are  evidences,  on  the  con- 
trary, of  vigorous  literary  growth.  Indeed,  nearly  a  century 
ago  the  theory  was  unhesitatingly  advanced  that  this  period 
was  one  of  great  literary  activity.  It  was  pointed  out  that 
the  Homeric  epic  could  not  have  sprung  at  once  into  being, 
no  matter  how  scant  the  proof,  or  even  indication,  of  the 
existence  of  a  Greek  literature  before  Homer's  time.  In  like 
manner  all  the  legendary  stories  that  illumine  the  early  pages 
of  Livy's  narrative  require,  it  was  said,  the  assumption  of  an 
epic  period  rich  in  literary  elements,  from  which  in  due  time 
a  second  Iliad  would  have  come.  No  one  now  believes  any 
such  fantastic  theory,  for  which  we  have  no  real  foundation 
at  all,  but  that  there  was  much  more  than  the  beginnings  of 
a  national  literature  is  abundantly  evident. 

Cicero  refers  in  more  than  one  passage,  on  the  authority  of 
Cato,  to  the  fact  that  the  early  Romans  at  their  banquets  used 
to  sing  of  the  deeds  of  prowess  of  their  great  heroes,  to  the 
accompaniment  of  the  flute.  What  the  form  of  these  songs 
was  we  have  no  means  of  knowing.  They  may  have  been 
extemporized.  But  there  was  abundant  material  for  them, 
for  it  was  customary  for  the  great  families  to  hand  down  from 
generation   to  generation  accounts   of  the   deeds   of  their 


GREECE  AND   ROME  271 

ancestors.  Hence  it  is  not  unlikely  that  these  gradually 
assumed  a  more  definite  form  as  they  were  sung  again  and  again. 
There  were  also  dirges  sung  at  the  funerals  of  great  men,  in 
which  their  great  deeds  were  celebrated.  The  suggestion  that 
these  songs  constituted  lays  in  the  Homeric  sense  is  of  course 
absurd,  but  they  certainly  contained  the  material  for  them. 
At  religious  festivals,  songs  in  honor  of  the  gods  were  chanted 
by  the  priests,  and  the  need  of  records  and  of  ceremonial 
observance  made  the  priesthood  literary  even  against  its  will. 
There  were  also  charms,  lullabies,  and  other  forms  of  folk- 
poetry  in  aljundance.  I  am  leaving  out  of  consideration  de- 
crees, religious  formulas,  and  laws,  all  of  which,  properly 
considered,  have  a  literary  value.  These  may  be  taken  for 
granted.  The  important  point  to  notice  is  the  abundance 
of  the  strictly  literary  material. 

But  there  were  other  and  more  developed  literary  forms. 
Thus  we  have  the  so-called  Fescemiine  verses,  the  existence 
of  which  has  been  traced  as  far  back  as  the  middle  of  the  fifth 
century.  These  were  rustic,  impromptu  verses  of  a  bantering 
kind,  common  at  marriages  and  in  triumphal  processions, 
where  with  the  banter  was  frequently  mingled  indecent 
abuse.  We  have  also  a  kind  of  composition  called  Satura, 
the  first  reference  to  which  is  connected  with  the  plague  of 
365-364  B.C.,  when  Etruscan  performers  were  introduced 
into  Rome  to  dance  to  music.  The  name  Satura  is  due  to 
Livy;  the  performance  was  probably  a  slightly  developed 
form  of  the  Fescennine  verses,  with  less  extemporaneous  and 
more  distinctl}^  dramatic  elements.  There  is  also  the  Fabula 
Atellana,  introduced  about  the  beginning  of  the  third  century 
from  Campania.  This  was  a  dramatic  performance  with  stock 
characters,  and  represented  the  life  of  a  country  town.  It  has 
been  compared  to  our  Punch  and  Judy  show,  and  represents 
a  still  higher  type  of  dramatic  development  than  the  Satura. 

In  addition  to  the  songs  of  the  priests  attempts  at  poetry 
of  a  higher  order  are  found  also  in  epitaphs,  some  of  which 


272  GREEK  LITERATURE 

have  come  down  to  us  from  the  early  part  of  the  third  cen- 
tury. 

The  form  in  which  all  these  productions  were  written  seems 
to  have  been  twofold.  There  is  first  of  all  the  so-called 
Saturnian  metre.  Concerning  the  nature  of  this  metre 
there  has  been  a  great  deal  of  dispute ;  and  scholars  have 
been  sharply  divided,  some  regarding  it  as  accentual,  others 
as  quantitative.  In  any  case,  however,  it  was  distinctly 
Roman  and  has  commonly  been  regarded  as  the  one  national 
Roman  metre.  Religious  songs  and  epitaphs  were  written 
in  Saturnians  —  possibly  also  the  Fescennine  verses.  Other 
early  fragments  were  written  in  a  three-eighths  measure, 
chiefly  trochaic.  The  fact  that  the  iambic-trochaic  metre  is 
the  medium  of  so  much  that  is  written  in  Greek  has  blinded 
critics  to  another  and  far  more  important  fact,  that  it  is 
better  adapted  to  Latin  than  to  Greek  and  is  the  natural 
medium  of  Latin  expression.  Accordingly,  no  foreign  in- 
fluence is  to  be  assumed  to  explain  this  form  of  early  Latin 
composition. 

After  its  five  hundred  years  of  incubation  the  Roman  state 
had  finally  burst  its  Italian  shell  and  emerged  into  the  light  of 
the  outside  world.  It  had  begun  a  career  of  conquest,  which 
in  less  than  two  hundred  years  was  to  put  the  nations  under 
its  feet  and  to  establish  a  government  which  should  weld 
the  whole  ancient  world  for  centuries  into  a  single  state. 
The  population  of  the  city  had  also  grown  enormously;  no 
longer  was  it  necessary  for  all  its  citizens  to  be  soldiers  and 
to  stand  ready  to  take  the  field  for  the  state.  Its  wealth 
had  increased  so  that  it  was  no  longer  incumbent  upon  every 
one  to  work  for  a  livelihood.  With  wealth  had  come  leisure, 
and  with  leisure  the  desire  as  well  as  the  opportunity  for  a 
more  highly  developed  means  of  amusement  than  had  con- 
tented the  less  cultivated  citizen.  Individual  culture  and 
refinement  were  soon  to  follow  upon  wealth.  It  is  almost 
impossible  to  appreciate  fully  the  enormous  expansion  of  the 


GREECE  AND   ROME  273 

Roman  view  during  the  third  century.  Contact  with  abut- 
ting nations  had  stimulated  the  Roman  mind  in  everj'  direc- 
tion. It  was  not  merely  needs  of  the  body  that  had  to  be 
satisfied,  but  needs  of  the  mind  as  well,  and  the  rate  of  growth 
during  this  century  was  so  rapid  that  no  native  literary 
effort  could  keep  pace  with  it.  It  was  accordingly  inevitable 
that  this  eager  spirit  should  reach  out  in  every  direction  for 
satisfaction.  The  nearest  as  well  as  the  best  that  was  offered 
to  it  was  Greek,  and  this  it  grasped  with  intense  eagerness. 

Association  with  Greece  had  begun  much  earlier.  The  first 
contact  probably  came  in  the  course  of  trade  along  the  coast, 
as  Greek  vessels  crept  up  to  the  Tiber's  mouth.  But  the 
gradual  expansion  of  Rome  on  land  was  inevitably  to  bring 
the  Romans  into  contact  with  Greece,  as  the  state  pushed 
its  arms  toward  the  South.  Cumae  was  the  first  Greek  city 
to  meet  this  movement,  and  in  giving  to  the  Romans  the  al- 
phabet it  forecasted  the  mighty  role  that  Greek  was  to  play 
in  Latin  hterature.  The  first  contact  with  the  Greece  of  the 
mainland  occurred  in  280  B.C.,  when  P3Trhus  sent  his  em- 
bassy from  Epirus  to  Rome.  After  this  event  this  contact 
became  much  more  frequent,  and  we  hear  again  and  again 
of  Greeks  who  spoke  Latin  and  of  Romans  who  spoke  Greek. 
By  the  close  of  the  First  Punic  War  Rome  was  on  terms  of 
intimacy,  not  to  say  alliance,  with  the  Itahan  Greeks.  This 
association,  however,  was,  in  the  main,  pohtical  rather  than 
social.  But  little  interchange  of  ideas  or  genuine  association 
of  individuals  can  be  discerned.  Hence  there  is  practically 
no  trace  of  Greek  influence  upon  Latin  thinking  or  upon 
Latin  literature  until  well  on  in  the  third  century.  As  I 
have  said,  such  literary  elements  as  we  can  discern  were 
distinctly  Roman,  rude  as  yet  and  uncouth,  but  with  great 
possibilities  of  development  if  the  opportunity  were  offered. 
Unfortunately  this  opportunity  was  not  to  be  offered.  The 
Romans  demanded  immediate  results.  This  meant  the  ab- 
sorption of  Greek. 


274  GREEK  LITERATURE 

Three  names  stand  out  preeminently  in  connection  with 
the  third  century,  Livius  Andronicus,  Naevius,  and  Ennius  ; 
during  the  brief  period  which  these  three  names  span,  the 
native  Roman  hterature  sank  into  obscurity,  while  Greek 
literature  came  to  monopolize  more  and  more  the  minds  of 
literary  Romans.  Livius  Andronicus  was  himself  a  Greek. 
Brought  to  Rome  by  the  event  of  war,  he  estabhshed  himself 
there  and  devoted  himself  to  letters.  In  240,  at  the  request 
of  the  aediles,  he  brought  out  a  play  adapted  from  the 
Greek,  for  a  performance  at  the  public  games.  This  was  a 
new  departure,  not  so  much  in  metrical  form  —  for,  as  I  have 
said,  the  iambic-trochaic  rhythm  was  genuinely  Latin  —  but 
in  organized  and  fully  developed  plot.  As  compared  with 
the  old  Fahula  Atellana,  or  Satura,  its  superiority  could  not 
but  be  felt  immediately,  and  it  seems  to  have  met  with  great 
success.  Thus  encouraged  Livius  continued  his  dramatic 
work,  particularly  in  tragedy,  though  we  have  indications 
of  at  least  three  comedies.  The  chief  work,  however,  asso- 
ciated with  him  is  a  translation  of  the  Odyssey  of  Homer, 
which  became  at  once  a  school-book.  To  this  fact  Livius 
owed  the  place  in  Latin  literature  which  he  always  held. 
As  in  the  case  of  his  plays,  he  used  a  Latin  inetrical  form 
which  had  been  already  developed  for  the  heroic  lay,  the 
Saturnian.  He  had  neither  the  capacity  nor  the  desire  to 
transfer  the  Greek  epic  form.  In  this  he  showed  good  judg- 
ment, for  it  is  doubtful  whether  a  Roman  audience  would 
at  this  time  have  endured  Greek  form  as  well  as  Greek  sub- 
stance. 

Naevius,  his  slightly  younger  contemporary,  was  an  Italian, 
if  not  a  Roman,  with  a  versatile  and  active  mind.  But  for 
external  influence  he  would  doubtless  have  made  a  great 
name  in  purely  Latin  composition.  The  fashion  set  by 
Livius,  however,  he  was  quick  to  follow,  but  he  showed  his 
distinctly  Roman  feeling,  as  well  as  the  originality  of  his 
genius,  by  preparing,  in  addition  to  his  adaptation  of  Greek 


GREECE  AND  ROME  275 

plays  to  the  Roman  stage,  certain  distinctly  Roman  plays 
in  which  the  subjects  were  taken  from  Roman  history  and 
Roman  legend.  In  some  of  these  plays  with  Roman  themes 
he  showed  himself  a  spiritual  brother  of  Aristophanes  by  open 
criticism  of  his  contemporaries,  a  practice  which  the  Romans, 
in  striking  contrast  to  the  Greeks,  punished  with  imprison- 
ment. In  his  advancing  years  he  devoted  his  attention 
to  the  composition  of  a  Roman  epic  on  the  First  Punic  War. 
This  he  naturally  wrote  in  Saturnians.  It  was  a  rugged  and 
uncouth  poem  which  moved  the  laughter  of  Horace  two  hun- 
dred years  later,  but  it  was  intensely  Roman,  strong,  vigor- 
ous, serious. 

Ennius,  though  slightly  later  than  Naevius,  belongs  to  this 
group  because  of  the  wide  range  of  his  work  as  well  as  by 
reason  of  his  historical  position.  In  temperament  a  cosmo- 
politan, with  the  ability  to  speak  three  languages,  he  added 
to  this  a  cultivation  possessed  by  neither  of  his  predecessors 
as  well  as  literary  power  of  the  highest  order.  He  too  fol- 
lowed the  example  of  Livius  and  Naevius  in  adapting  Greek 
comedy  and  tragedy  for  the  Roman  stage.  In  his  tragedy 
he  won  a  distinguished  success,  but  as  a  comic  poet  he  was  a 
failure.  The  public  at  this  time  was  composed  mainly  of  the 
vulgus  ignohile,  and  it  is  likely  that  his  very  cultivation  made 
him  ill-disposed  to  the  kind  of  jest  that  would  please  such  an 
audience.  But  Ennius's  claim  to  fame  does  not  rest  upon  his 
dramatic  efforts.  With  his  name  is  indissolubly  connected 
the  molding  of  the  Roman  tongue  to  the  laws  of  the  Greek 
hexameter.  Perhaps  under  the  influence  of  Naevius,  but 
doubtless  also  from  natural  inclination,  he  set  himself  to 
write  an  epic  of  the  history  of  Rome  from  its  earliest  begin- 
nings in  the  period  of  misty  legend  and  divine  guidance. 
But  he  boldly  abandoned  the  Saturnian  measure  of  Livius 
and  Naevius  and  came  forward  with  a  metrical  form  entirely 
new.  The  magnitude  of  his  task  can  hardly  be  appreci- 
ated by  a  modern.     We  have  often  remarked  the  lack  of 


276  GREEK  LITERATURE 

success  with  which  EngHsh  poets  have  tried  to  write  English 
hexameters,  but  the  genius  of  the  Latin  language  was  entirely 
anti-dactylic  and  Ennius  had  to  develop  an  almost  new 
vocabulary,  and  to  modify  the  laws  of  Latin  word-formation 
so  as  to  make  the  stern  and  solemn  Roman  trip  along  like  a 
nimble  Greek.  That  he  was  not  wholly  successful,  that 
many  of  his  lines  were  crude,  many  of  them  rough,  is  not 
to  be  wondered  at.  The  marvel  is  that  he  succeeded  so 
well ;  for  even  in  the  hands  of  masters  of  rhythm  like  Vergil 
and  Ovid  the  Latin  hexameter  never  achieved  the  lightness 
and  quickness  of  the  Greek.  With  Ennius  sets  in  the  full 
tide  of  Greek  influence.     We  have  only  to  watch  its  flow. 

This  period,  however,  is  preeminently  the  period  of  Roman 
comedy,  which  is  represented  chiefly  by  two  names,  Plautus 
and  Terence,  although  of  a  number  of  other  writers  we  have 
fragmentary  remains.  Plautus  is  in  spirit  the  immediate 
successor  of  Naevius  and  thus  stands  in  sharp  distinction  to 
Terence,  who  is  related,  si3iritually,  rather  to  Ennius.  Plautus 
was  an  Italian,  an  Umbrian,  who  after  a  varied  experience, 
mainly  in  mercantile  pursuits,  became  a  playwright  and  a 
manager,  perhaps  an  actor.  In  seeking  means  of  amuse- 
ment for  the  public,  he,  hke  Naevius,  had  recourse  to  the  vast 
mass  of  Greek  material  ready  at  hand  in  the  New  Comedy, 
whose  chief  representative  was  Menander.  This  material  he 
used  quite  independently,  combining,  transforming,  supple- 
menting it  as  his  histrionic  feeling  dictated.  Of  the  twenty- 
one  plays  which  have  come  down  to  us  in  more  or  less  com- 
plete form  every  title  is  Latin,  but  the  location  and  the  plot 
are  Greek.  Sometimes  he  has  combined  two  Greek  plays 
into  one,  when  the  comic  effect  of  one  of  them  seemed  too 
meager.  The  spirit  of  Greek  comedy  was  distinctly  un- 
Roman.  The  chief  motif,  illicit  love,  revolted  the  Roman 
sense  of  propriety.  The  position  of  the  courtesan  and  the 
low  esteem  of  the  family  relation  were  also  distinctly  un- 
Roman.     The  carelessness  with  which  serious  matters  were 


GREECE  AND  ROME  277 

treated,  the  success  that  always  attended  upon  knavery, 
the  role  plaj'ed  by  the  parasite  and  the  pander,  were  utterly 
foreign  to  the  Roman  taste.  But  all  this  material  provided 
abundant  opportunity  for  comedy,  and,  inasmuch  as  it 
represented  Greek  manners  and  morals,  for  which  the  Roman 
had  in  general  a  profound  contempt,  not  only  was  no  umbrage 
taken,  but  many  of  the  plays  were  extremely  successful.  A 
great  part,  however,  of  this  success  was  unquestionably  due 
to  Plautus's  own  skill  in  devising  comic  situations,  or  to  the 
purely  Roman  elements  with  which  he  amplified  his  originals. 
Plautus  was  not  restricted  by  any  considerations  of  dra- 
matic technique.  Unity  of  time  and  place  did  not  worry 
him,  nor  did  he,  any  more  than  Shakespeare,  care  about 
geographical  details.  To  most  of  his  auditors  one  Greek 
name  was  as  good  as  another,  and  not  one  of  his  spectators 
cared  whether  Thebes  was  a  seaport  or  not.  On  the  other 
hand,  a  play  where  every  allusion  was  Greek,  every  situation 
was  Greek,  would  naturally  soon  pall  upon  a  Roman  audi- 
ence. Consequently  the  plays  of  Plautus  are  replete  with 
references  to  specifically  Roman  practices,  situations,  and 
events.  The  habits  of  the  Roman  market-place,  the  regula- 
tions of  the  Roman  government,  transactions  among  the 
Romans  themselves,  are  played  upon  again  and  again.  We 
even  find  the  Roman  Lar  familiaris  acting  as  tutelary  deity 
to  an  Athenian  household.  JNIanj-  characteristics  of  manners 
are  also  distinctly  Roman.  Thus  the  position  occupied  by 
some  of  the  matrons  is  much  above  their  corresponding 
position  in  Greece,  and  the  severe  and  l^rutal  treatment  of 
slaves  is  essentially  Roman  rather  than  Greek.  There  is 
also  an  undercurrent  throughout  of  that  seriousness  of  mind 
which  never  forsook  the  Roman  even  in  his  lighter  moments. 
There  are  numerous  reflections  on  life  and  its  problems, 
such  as  would  hardly  belong  to  a  mere  comedy  of  manners. 
When  we  come  to  Terence,  on  the  other  hand,  we  find 
that  his  six  plays  all  have  Greek  names,  that  the  Roman 


278  GREEK  LITERATURE 

allusion  and  in  general  the  whole  Roman  element  have 
practically  disappeared.  While  the  thinness  of  the  Greek 
plot  made  it  necessary  to  combine  two  plays,  almost  no 
other  liberty  has  been  taken  with  the  originals.  There  is, 
however,  a  marked  distinction  between  Terence  and  Plautus, 
both  in  language  and  technique.  Plautus  is  conversational 
and  rugged,  Terence  is  refined  and  polished.  It  is  remark- 
able how  much  progress  had  been  made  in  the  development 
of  the  Latin  polite  style  during  the  period  between  Plautus 
and  Terence.  The  style  of  Terence  is  so  pure,  so  clear,  and 
yet  so  Latin  that  it  was  the  subject  of  unreserved  praise  by 
the  best  critics  of  the  Augustan  Age.  His  friendship  with 
the  elder  Scipionic  circle  gave  rise  to  the  suggestion  on  the 
part  of  his  enemies  that  Terence,  who  was  not  a  Roman, 
had  not  written  these  plays  himself,  but  that  they  were  the 
work  of  members  of  that  circle  in  which  were  included  the 
most  refined  and  cultivated  men  of  Rome.  While  this 
aspersion  is  undoubtedly  false,  it  nevertheless  serves  to  show 
the  perfection  of  his  style.  In  the  general  matters  of  tech- 
nique Terence  clung  with  great  closeness  to  his  Greek  originals. 
The  Roman  element  in  his  plays  consists  therefore  solely  in 
the  language.  Terence  was  not  a  popular  author  in  the 
sense  that  Plautus  was,  that  is,  with  the  general  public, 
although  one  of  his  plays,  the  Eunuchus,  was  extremely  well 
received ;  but  this  play  approaches  more  nearly  to  the  Plautine 
spirit  than  any  of  the  others.  The  very  qualities  that  com- 
mended Terence  to  his  cultured  friends  made  him  less  popu- 
lar with  the  people.  Hence  with  him  Roman  comedy  ceases 
to  be  a  popular  amusement  and,  as  a  consequence,  dies. 

During  this  period  also,  Roman  tragedy  had  had  a  short 
and  more  or  less  fitful  success.  No  complete  plays  have 
come  down  to  us,  but  two  great  authors,  Pacuvius  and 
Accius,  are  referred  to  again  and  again.  These  poets  re- 
stricted themselves  almost  entirely  to  Greek  subjects  and 
to  Greek  treatment.     There  are  indications  that  they  tried 


GREECE  AND  ROME  279 

Roman  subjects  occasionally,  but  their  hearts  seem  not  to 
have  been  in  such  themes.  We  are  unable  to  form  any 
clear  idea  of  the  structure  of  these  plays.  But  the  Roman 
element  was  unquestionably  very  slight.  How  successful 
they  were  in  retaining  popular  approval  it  is  also  impos- 
sible to  say.  The  fragments  seem  to  indicate  that  the 
model  was  Euripides  and  that  the  problems  of  humanity 
were  treated  rather  than  the  relations  of  God  and  fate  to 
man.  The  appeal  of  Roman  tragedy  must  have  been 
primarily  to  the  cultivated  class.  The  ordinary  public  of 
Rome  could  have  been  interested  only  by  a  reaUsm  which 
was  foreign  to  the  Greek  taste,  and  seems  not  to  have  been 
present  in  the  Roman  imitations.  Tragedy,  therefore,  was 
never  a  popular  form  of  literature  among  the  Romans  and 
in  the  Imperial  Age  became  merely  a  rhetorical  pastime.  A 
collection  of  nine  plays  has  come  down  to  us  under  the 
name  of  the  Younger  Seneca.  These  treat  Greek  themes 
entirel}^ ;  there  is  absolutely  nothing  Roman  in  them. 
Metrically  some  change  has  taken  place.  The  Greek  chorus 
has  ceased  to  have  any  real  part  in  the  play  and  its  place 
is  taken  by  a  number  of  odes  after  the  manner  of  Horace, 
some  of  them  extremely  beautiful,  but  having  little  con- 
nection with  the  dramatic  action.  The  characters  are  no 
longer  Greek,  to  be  sure,  nor  can  they  be  said  to  be  Roman. 
They  are  essentially  mythical  and  unnatural.  Their  speeches 
are  remarkable  rhetorical  productions,  wrought  out  with 
extreme  care.  The  horrors  are  always  performed  in  open 
view,  and  the  descriptions  of  incantation,  witchcraft,  and 
murder  are  morbidly  terrible.  There  is  great  strength  in 
much  of  Seneca's  work,  but  it  is  obviously  the  production 
of  the  study,  and  is  intended  for  recitation,  not  for  the  stage. 
This  was  inevita])le,  for  under  the  Empire  there  was  no 
chance  at  all  for  tragedy.  Both  the  habits  of  the  people 
and  the  spirit  and  regulations  of  tlie  government  precluded 
any  freedom  of  composition.     Literature  was  shackled. 


280  GREEK   LITERATURE 

The  old  dramatic  Satura,  which  fell  into  disfavor  under 
the  tide  of  Greek  influence  when  this  set  in  so  strongly  with 
Plautus  and  Ennius,  reappears  in  a  different  form  in  the 
work  of  Lucilius,  who,  like  Terence,  was  a  member  of  the 
Scipionic  circle,  but  at  a  later  date.  Lucilius  wrote  thirty 
books  of  satire.  The  subjects  treated  embraced  everything 
that  might  fall  under  the  consideration  of  an  intelUgent  and 
cultivated  man.  Being  an  Italian  and  of  the  equestrian 
order  at  Rome,  his  interest  in  Roman  affairs  was  serious 
and  patriotic.  Nor  was  it  confined  to  public  hfe ;  it  extended 
to  matters  of  grammar,  literary  criticism,  and  social  habits. 
The  name  Satire  was  originally  applied  to  these  occasional 
poems  because  of  the  variety  of  their  contents,  but,  in  dis- 
cussing political  matters  at  Rome,  LuciUus  allowed  himself 
a  freedom  of  criticism  which  reminds  us  of  Naevius  and 
recalls  the  mordant  bitterness  of  Aristophanes.  He  thus 
attached  to  satire  a  characteristic  which,  though  obscured 
in  some  measure  in  Horace  and-  Persius,  was  to  become 
dominant  in  Juvenal  and  thereafter  in  all  satiric  writing. 
In  his  earliest  poems  Lucilius  employed  the  metres  of  comedy 
as  well  as  the  elegiac  couplet,  but  he  finally  settled  upon  the 
hexameter  as  the  best  medium  of  expression.  In  this,  too, 
he  set  the  style  for  all  subsequent  work ;  for  under  this  influ- 
ence the  heroic  measure  has  become  the  vehicle  of  satire  in 
English  and  French.  But  in  spite  of  the  Greek  metre  every- 
thing that  Lucihus  wrote  was  essentially  Roman,  and,  so 
far  as  we  can  judge,  Greek  influence  was  conspicuously 
absent. 

AYith  Lucilius  closes  the  pre-Ciceronian  period  of  Latin* 
literature.  This  period  was  essentially  Roman  in  spirit. 
Greek  influence  was  steadily  increasing,  to  be  sure,  but  the 
Roman  element  was  everywhere  predominant  and  the  Greek 
material  was  used  with  an  independence  which  was  to  be 
expected  of  men  in  whom  the  narrow  national  spirit  was 
still  supreme  and  who  were  just  feeling  their  way  toward 


GREECE  AND  ROME  281 

literature.  It  is  significant  that  the  Greek  authors,  imitated 
or  translated,  belong  to  the  best  period  of  Greek  literature, 
the  period  of  Homer,  of  tragedy  and  comedy.  The  Alex- 
andrian literature  had  apparently  made  but  little  impres- 
sion upon  these  sturdy  writers.  But  now  a  change  begins. 
The  Romans  cease  to  be  Italian  and  become  cosmopoUtan. 
Education  is  tinged  more  and  more  with  contemporary 
Greek  thought.  Leisure  gives  opportunity  for  learning. 
Reflection  paves  the  way  for  philosophy.  The  problems  of 
the  gro^\^ng  state  give  way  to  those  of  an  organized  govern- 
ment, and  with  no  concern  for  existence,  the  mind  turns  to 
the  problems  of  existence.  Hence  it  happens  that  when 
we  reach  the  Ciceronian  Age  we  find  new  influences  at  work, 
on  the  one  side  Greek  philosophy  as  shown  in  Lucretius  and 
the  work  of  Cicero's  advanced  years,  on  the  other  the  learned 
poetry  of  Alexandria  as  developed  and  molded  by  Catullus 
and  more  especially  by  Vergil. 

Whether  Lucretius  is  a  greater  poet  than  Vergil,  or  whether 
the  Mantuan  bard  is  to  hold  the  first  rank  among  Roman 
poets,  has  been  a  matter  of  controversy  among  scholars, 
but  the  question  is  not  a  serious  one,  because  there  is  in 
reality  but  little  ground  for  comparison.  Their  aims  and 
methods  are  so  different,  their  subjects  so  diverse,  that  they 
can  be  regarded  as  together  occupying  the  highest  peak 
of  the  Roman  Parnassus.  In  one  particular,  however, 
Lucretius  is  antipodal  to  Vergil ;  he  is  Roman  through  and 
through.  As  I  have  indicated  above,  the  old  order  was 
changing,  and  everything  that  had  been  regarded  with 
veneration  in  Roman  character  and  achievement  was  giving 
way  before  the  invasion  of  cosmopolitanism,  with  its  atten- 
dant carelessness  of  everything  human  and  divine.  The 
dominant  note  of  the  early  part  of  the  first  century  was 
bloodshed  and  cynicism.  Lucretius,  a  man  born  out  of 
time,  had  been  intensely  moved  by  the  conditions  of  his 
age.     We  know  nothing  about  his  life  (the  dates  even  of 


282  GREEK   LITERATURE 

his  birth  and  death  are  disputed),  but  we  know  in  general 
that  he  was  a  contemporary  of  Cicero's  youth,  and  we  beUeve 
that  he  died  at  the  age  of  forty-four  and  that  his  great  poem 
was  given  to  the  world  by  Cicero.  In  the  midst  of  the  havoc 
and  cruel  rapine  of  his  earlier  years  he  had  doubtless  brooded 
long  and  deeply  upon  the  problems  of  human  life  and  the 
universe  in  which  he  lived.  As  an  educated  Roman  he  had 
gone  to  the  sources  of  wisdom  in  the  Greek  philosophy,  and 
apparently  he  had  finally  calmed  the  bitterness  of  his  soul 
and  stilled  the  yearnings  of  his  heart  by  the  adoption  of 
Epicureanism,  a  system  whose  chief  tenet  in  the  conception 
of  its  founder  consisted  in  the  avoidance  of  everything  that 
would  disturb  the  mind,  particularly  in  the  denial  of  a  Ufe 
beyond  the  grave.  "Epicureanism  was  not  hedonism;  it 
was  rather  a  system  of  quietism,"  which  must  have  appealed 
strongly  to  one  who  was  burdened  with  the  cares  of  a  suffer- 
ing world.  Lucretius  was  thus  a  missionary  on  whose  con- 
science was  laid  the  duty  of  rescuing  his  fellow-men  from 
the  despair  in  which  they  found  themselves.  For  the  gospel 
that  he  preached  he  had  recourse  to  Epicurus,  but  the  form 
in  which  he  clothed  it  was  his  own.  What  we  have  of  Epi- 
curus is  a  collection  of  shapeless  literary  crudities.  The 
brilhancy  of  style  which  we  associate  with  Greek  was  in 
him  no  longer  existent.  It  is  the  glory  of  Lucretius  that  he 
took  this  uninspiring  material  and  transmuted  it  into  poetry, 
genuine  poetry  in  substance  and  expression.  Epicurus  was 
his  inspiration,  but  Greek  didactic  poetry  was  only  very 
remotely  his  model.  His  passion,  his  pity,  his  sympathy, 
his  keenness  of  vision,  his  boldness  of  imagination,  his  antici- 
pation of  modern  scientific  theories,  his  feeling  for  the  im- 
mensity of  nature  —  these  are  all  his  own.  His  physical 
facts  are  interpreted  by  the  power  of  a  divining  fancy,  and 
his  appreciation  of  the  high  nature  of  man  makes  him  essen- 
tially religious,  even  where  he  seems  most  atheistic.  His 
form  is  the  hexameter,  but  a  hexameter  as  far  superior  to 


GREECE  AND  ROME  283 

that  of  Ennius  and  Lucilius  as  it  was  inferior  to  Vergil's. 
He  handled  it  with  conscious  power  but  with  a  carelessness 
which  regards  it  always  as  inferior  to  the  thought  it  con- 
veys. We  find  reminiscences  of  early  Latin  and  the  great 
Greek  authors,  but  these  are  not  imitations  and  show  merely 
that  he  had  steeped  himself  in  the  early  literature.  In  thus 
doing  he  was  acting,  as  I  have  said,  quite  out  of  harmony 
with  the  spirit  of  his  times,  for  this  was  the  age  of  the  short 
poem,  of  the  occasional  clever  skit,  of  the  finely  polished 
miniature,  and  the  Romans  who  were  his  contemporaries 
had  given  themselves  to  this  kind  of  mediocrity.  Only  one 
of  them  showed  his  genius  in  spite  of  it  —  Catullus. 

In  Catullus  we  find  an  intimate  of  the  best  circles  at 
Rome,  a  debauchee,  almost  a  roue,  a  man  without  settled 
purpose  in  life  and  without  moral  principle.  If  he  professed 
any  philosophy  at  all  he  was  a  follower  of  Epicurus,  not  the 
spiritual  Epicurus  of  Lucretius  but  the  sensual  Epicurus  of 
modern  interpretation.  To  him  enjoyment  meant  sensual 
delights,  and  he  represents  to  the  utmost  the  Rome  of  the 
period.  In  all  essentials  the  work  of  Catullus  is  Greek. 
He  domesticated  in  Latin  the  hendecasyllable,  but  he  was 
also  facile  as  well  as  effective  in  the  handUng  of  other  metres. 
As  a  writer  of  pure  song  he  is  without  a  peer  in  Latin,  and, 
while  we  may  not  agree  with  Mackail  that  he  is  one  of 
earth's  three  lyric  poets,  the  other  two  being  Sappho  and 
Shelley,  his  passion,  melody,  and  lightsomeness  raise  him  to 
the  highest  rank.  It  is  remarkable  that  one  trammelled  by 
the  fetters  of  Alexandrianism  could  have  soared  so  high, 
and  in  this  we  perhaps  see  the  Roman  spirit  of  independence 
bursting  the  bonds  of  Greek  conventionalism.  We  must 
remember  that  the  Empire  had  not  yet  come  to  pass,  that 
the  domination  of  the  Imperial  system  had  not  yet  fully 
throttled  independence,  that  literature  was  still  not  the  hand- 
maid of  a  master,  but  a  partner  in  the  house.  Hence  it  is 
that  a  Roman  in  whose  veins  flowed  the  fire  of  a  Celt  could 


284  GREEK  LITERATURE 

rise  beyond  his  Greek  models  and  strike,  particularly  in  the 
Lesbia  poems,  a  note  which  in  comparison  with  theirs  was 
instinct  with  reality,  with  naturalness,  and  also  with  strength. 
The  most  distinguished  of  the  Roman  poets,  the  one  whose 
name  comes  immediately  to  the  lips  when  Latin  literature 
is  mentioned,  is  Vergil.  He  is  also  that  one  poet  about  whom 
the  dispute  as  to  Greek  influence  has  raged  most  fiercely. 
The  Aeneid,  the  work  of  his  mature  years,  came  to  be  re- 
garded immediately  as  the  embodiment  of  the  spirit  of  Rome. 
He  deserves,  as  no  other  Roman  author  deserves,  the  epithet 
of  national,  for  he  voiced,  as  no  other  poet  voiced,  the  destiny 
and  glory  of  his  country.  Vergil's  development  in  certain 
respects  is  remarkable.  The  great  men  of  old,  Naevius  and 
Ennius,  had  found  their  inspiration  in  the  great  masters  of 
Greek  literature,  but  when  Vergil  grew  up  the  dominating 
literary  influence  was  Alexandrian.  Vergil,  perhaps  naturally, 
was  divided  in  his  allegiance  between  the  school  of  Alexandria 
and  Lucretius.  His  first  attempts  at  poetry  are  Alexandrian 
of  the  Alexandrians.  He  seems  then  to  move  backwards 
through  the  ages  of  Greek  poetry,  passing  in  his  Georgics 
under  the  spell  of  Hesiod,  up  to  his  greatest  work,  which  is 
so  permeated  with  Homer  that  from  the  time  of  its  appearance 
up  to  the  present  there  has  been  a  constant  dispute  as  to 
whether  he  was  to  be  allowed  any  original  power  at  all.  A 
shrinking,  timid,  perhaps  cowardly,  but  withal  intensely 
imaginative  nature,  Vergil  essayed  with  unabated  diffidence 
the  tasks  laid  upon  him.  He  seems  to  have  believed  always 
that  his  strength  —  if  he  had  any  at  all  —  lay  in  the  occa- 
sional piece,  not  in  the  sustained  effort.  But  with  years 
and  work  inevitably  came  power,  and  the  man  who  in  youth 
recoiled  with  trembling  before  the  prospect  of  an  epic,  in 
his  later  years  gave  to  Rome  and  to  the  world  an  example 
of  finished  beauty  which  has  made  subsequent  authors  his 
debtor  and  which  is  likely  to  retain  its  power  as  long  as  poets 
write.     During  the  last  half  century  of  the  Republic  a  certain 


GREECE  AND  ROME  285 

ideal  of  art  had  become  as  fully  recognized  in  Rome  as  it  had 
already  been  recognized  in  the  later  Greek  period.  This 
was,  to  sum  it  up  in  a  word,  the  idea  of  literary  inheritance. 
Recognizing  frankly  that  the  time  when  a  poet  could  browse 
in  an  untouched  field  had  passed,  the  writers  of  this  age 
aimed  to  build  their  own  structures  upon  the  broad  founda- 
tions of  earlier  genius.  This  principle  has  since  dominated 
all  artistic  literature.  The  Romans  were  most  fortunate 
in  being  heirs  to  only  one  foreign  literature,  as  compared 
with  ourselves,  who,  in  addition  to  inheriting  from  many, 
are  brethren  at  the  same  time  to  all  our  contemporaries 
and  under  manifold  obligations  to  them.  False,  therefore, 
to  the  ideal  of  literary  art  was  the  poet  who  did  not  steep 
himself  in  all  that  had  preceded  before  essaying  anything  of 
his  own.  Absolute  originality  was  as  impossible  to  a  Roman 
as  it  is  to  a  modern.  What  originality  was  possible  had 
regard  only  to  the  spirit  with  which  an  author  informed  his 
work.  Vergil  in  temperament  was  particularly  susceptible 
to  this  principle  of  art,  and  we  must  therefore  at  the  outset 
assume  that  his  work  will  show  many  reminiscences  of  his 
predecessors,  whether  Greek  or  Roman,  in  phrase  and  met- 
rical technique,  as  well  as  in  the  broader  elements  of  theme 
and  structure. 

The  works  on  which  Vergil's  fame  rests  are  the  Bucolics, 
the  Georgics,  and  the  Aeneid,  all,  it  must  be  remarked,  Greek 
titles.  The  Bucolics  owe  their  inspiration  directly  to  The- 
ocritus and  his  Sicilian  Eclogues.  In  Theocritus,  however, 
the  shepherds  are  real  shepherds,  and  there  is  a  glamour  of 
verisimilitude  over  all  that  he  describes.  But  shepherds 
were  disappearing  from  Italian  soil.  The  slave  had  taken 
the  place  of  the  freeborn  husbandman,  and  in  Vergil's  poem 
the  personages  of  the  Sicilian  muse  seem  strangely  out  of 
place.  How  artificial  the  whole  species  of  poetry  was  may 
be  gathered  from  the  fact  that  Vergil  felt  no  incongruity  in 
commingling  Italian  with  Greek  features  of  landscape  and 


286  GREEK  LITERATURE 

life.  The  resulting  rural  picture  is  such  as  could  nowhere 
be  discovered  unless  perchance  in  some  artificial  park  where 
nature  has  been  subjected  to  man's  device.  And  yet  as  we 
read  we  wish  that  these  pictures  could  be  realized.  We  lose 
our  sense  of  unreality  in  our  enjoyment  of  the  idyllic  scene. 
We  muse  and  dream  and  sing  with  Vergil  and  care  not  at 
all  even  if  the  Sicilian  beech  is  made  to  spring  from  Mantuan 
soil,  and  the  Sicilian  mountain  to  rise  out  of  Italian  plain. 

The  discerning  vision  of  IVIaecenas  remarked  the  power  of 
this  youthful  poet  and  suggested  that  he  might  further  the 
plan  of  the  Princeps  for  bringing  back  the  Golden  Age  and 
recall  the  farmers  to  the  soil  by  the  witchery  of  his  music. 
Under  this  influence  Vergil  wrote  the  Georgics,  a  glorifica- 
tion of  labor  and  country  life.  Here  his  inspiration  was 
frankly  Hesiod,  although  he  drew  from  numerous  other 
sources,  both  Greek  and  Roman.  Husbandry,  vine-growing, 
cattle-breeding,  bee-keeping,  all  those  pursuits  to  which 
Italian  soil  is  particularly  adapted,  are  discussed  in  the  four 
books  of  this  treatise.  A  most  unpromising  subject,  truly; 
and  yet  Vergil  handled  it  in  so  masterly  a  manner  that  his 
work  was  not  merely  regarded  by  subsequent  writers  on 
agriculture  as  authoritative,  but  reached  such  a  point  of 
poetic  beauty  as  to  be  the  despair  of  all  subsequent  imitators. 
Farming  details  gave  opportunities  for  story,  description, 
or  homily,  which  were  always  seized  and  brilliantly  im- 
proved. We  may  be  wearied  by  minute  directions  about 
homely  matters,  but  we  lose  this  weariness  in  our  admiration 
for  such  brilliant  passages  as  the  combat  of  the  bees,  the 
Scythian  winter,  the  myth  of  Orpheus,  and  the  glorification 
of  Italy.  If  Hesiod  wrote  for  peasants,  Vergil  certainly 
could  give  delight  to  the  most  highly  cultured  country 
gentleman. 

The  Aeneid,  the  epic  of  Rome's  national  growth  and  des- 
tiny, was  so  evidently  based  on  Homer  that  immediately  upon 
its  publication  hostile  critics  drew  attention  to  the  many  ob  - 


GREECE  AND  ROME  287 

vious  imitations.  Homer  was,  it  is  true,  not  the  only  source 
from  which  Vergil  drew.  Close  study  of  iearly  Roman  litera- 
ture is  everywhere  indicated,  and  not  merely  the  Homeric 
cycle,  but  some  of  the  later  romantic  poets  were  laid  under 
contribution.  Still  the  Aeneid  is  essentially  Homeric.  In 
the  composition  of  this  poem  Vergil  showed  clearly  the  limi- 
tations of  his  genius.  By  nature  an  episodic  writer,  he  first 
sketched  the  plan  of  the  work  in  prose,  and  then  proceeded  to 
elaborate  those  episodes  which  appealed  to  him  particularly. 
There  is  therefore  a  great  unevenness  in  the  poem,  for  much 
that  was  necessary  in  the  plan  must  have  been  singularly 
unattractive  to  the  poet's  soul.  Still,  emphasizing  as  much 
as  we  would  the  fact  that  the  subject  is  borrowed,  that  much 
of  the  treatment  is  borrowed,  we  yet  find  throughout  such 
a  radical  difference  from  the  Homeric  masterpiece  that  if 
we  did  not  have  Homer  we  should  never  suffer  in  our  ap- 
preciation of  the  Latin  poem.  The  simple,  naive  Homeric 
image  is  not  simple  or  naive  in  Vergil.  Homer's  clear-cut 
vision  appears  in  Vergil  as  a  view  in  which  all  the  elements 
of  landscape  are  at  once  commingled.  The  straightforward 
story  of  Homer  becomes  in  Vergil  one  that  involves  all 
that  has  gone  before  and  all  that  is  to  come  after  in  human 
destiny.  The  problem  of  life,  which  to  Homer  is  clear,  is 
in  Vergil  surrounded  by  the  haze  of  speculative  musing.  The 
will  of  the  gods,  which  in  Homer  determined  arbitrarily  the 
life  of  man,  is  in  Vergil,  despite  his  own  desire,  wrapped  about 
with  the  yearning,  the  sufferings,  and  the  wild  endeavors  of 
man.  The  central  figure,  Aeneas,  is  one  that  has  never  ap- 
pealed to  our  modern  feeling.  At  first  sight  he  is  an  un- 
reality, a  shrinking  spiritual  phantasm,  but,  as  we  study 
him  more  closely,  we  see  in  him  one  who  finds  his  highest 
delight  in  doing  the  will  of  God,  but  who  at  the  same  time 
never  fails  to  be  intensely  human  in  sympathy,  in  tenderness, 
and  in  a  melancholy  which  often  verges  close  upon  despair. 
Vergilian  this  is,   not   Homeric;    Roman,   not  Greek.     In 


288  GREEK  LITERATURE 

painting  such  a  picture,  Vergil  must  have  been  pouring  out 
his  own  heart,  and  we  shall  not  go  far  astray  if  we  recognize 
in  Aeneas  Vergil's  ideal  man,  formed  upon  himself  as  a  model. 
The  broodings  of  Aeneas  are  Vergil's  broodings,  the  dreams  of 
Aeneas  are  Vergil's  dreams ;  Vergil  himself  would  be  brave  as 
Aeneas  is  brave  and  Aeneas's  weakness  is  Vergil's  weakness. 
In  striking  contrast  with  the  figure  of  Aeneas  is  that  of  Dido. 
Here  Vergil's  own  ignorance  saved  him  from  failure,  for,  him- 
self without  experience  of  woman's  nature,  but  wonderfully 
sympathetic  and  tender,  he  has  drawn  a  picture  of  Dido 
which  makes  her  easily  one  of  the  great  women  in  literature, 
just  because  to  the  later  romantic  Greek  model  he  has  added 
those  qualities  of  his  own  on  account  of  which  he  was  called 
Parthenios,  the  maidenlike.  It  is  not  necessary  to  go  into 
a  detailed  study  of  the  Aeneid.  It  is  only  to  be  emphasized 
that  the  spirit  of  the  Aeneid  is  not  Greek  alone  but  Greek 
molded  by  the  overmastering  genius  of  a  Roman,  in  whom 
were  blended  the  traditions  of  the  past  and  the  breadth  of 
view  and  philosophic  insight  of  one  who  brooded  over  the 
affairs  of  men  without  being  an  actor  therein. 

The  great  representative  of  Roman  cosmopolitanism  and 
genial  Epicureanism  is  Horace.  Like  other  cultivated 
Romans  he  was  trained  from  early  youth  in  all  the  lore  of  the 
Greeks,  and  was  engaged  in  completing  his  education  in 
Athens  at  the  time  of  the  assassination  of  Caesar.  His 
literary  activity  falls  into  three  periods,  which  may  be  roughly 
designated  the  Roman  period,  the  Greek  period,  and  the 
world  period.  To  the  first  belong  the  earlier  poems,  namely 
the  Epodes  and  the  Satires.  In  these  he  was  distinctly 
Roman.  Finding  on  his  return  from  Athens  the  chief  lines 
of  literary  work  occupied  by  other  men,  he  seems  to  have 
chosen  for  his  special  field  satire  of  the  Lucilian  type.  To 
this  he  was  led  also  by  the  circumstances  of  his  position  and  his 
own  temperament.  In  the  Satires  he  employs  the  hexameter, 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  had  been  finally  established  by  Lucilius 


GREECE  AND   ROME  289 

as  the  vehicle  for  this  kind  of  Hterature.  He  had,  however, 
experimented  with  other  metres  in  the  Epodes  and  so  did 
not  come  to  the  hexameter  until  he  had  proved  by  experi- 
ment the  inadequac}^  of  any  other  metrical  form.  In  his 
treatment  of  the  hexameter,  Horace,  while  not  attaining  to 
the  finish  of  Vergil,  represents  a  distinct  advance  over  Lu- 
cilius.  The  tone  and  content  of  these  writings  are  distinctly 
Roman,  and,  while  there  are  occasional  Greek  illusions,  they 
are  not  sufficient  even  to  color  the  whole.  At  the  close  of  his 
first  period  Horace  had  attained  an  assured  position  in  the 
circle  of  JNIaecenas  and  in  the  favor  of  Augustus.  It  was 
doubtless  at  their  suggestion  that  he  directed  his  attention 
to  lyric  poetry,  in  which  he  soon  showed  himself  to  be  a 
master.  The  way  had  been  blazed  by  Catullus,  but  Horace's 
ambition  reached  much  further,  in  fact  to  the  complete  do- 
mestication of  the  chief  Greek  literary  forms  in  Latin. 
Alcaeus  and  Sappho  were  his  immediate  models  and  furnished 
the  names  for  his  chief  metres.  The  subject-matter  also  was 
greatly  influenced  by  Greek,  while  language  and  allusion 
keep  us  continually  reminded  of  his  masters.  The  last  period, 
that  of  the  fourth  book  of  the  Odes  and  the  Epistles,  is  less 
Greek  in  form,  but  in  subjects  and  in  method  of  treatment 
he  took  his  place  by  the  side  of  Cicero  in  the  evident  desire 
to  expound  to  his  countrj-men  the  principles  of  artistic  com- 
position as  set  forth  by  Greek  teachers.  Compared  with 
Vergil  Horace  is  always  independently  Roman,  even  in  his 
most  Greek  period.  Archilochus  may  have  captured  his 
fancy  in  his  earlier  years,  and  Aristotle  was  undoubtedly  his 
chief  source  in  his  later  works,  but  these  men  only  furnished 
type  and  material ;  treatment  and  illustration  are  Horace's 
own.  Even  in  his  Odes  his  range  of  view  goes  far  beyond 
that  of  the  Greek  lyric  poets.  Many  of  these  poems  show 
a  curious  similarity  to  the  early  Satires,  and  Horace's  ex- 
perience with  the  Bore,  and  his  escape  from  the  falling  tree, 
are  but  two  different  expressions  of  Horace's  own  self.     No 


290  GREEK  LITERATURE 

critic  made  haste  to  show  Horace's  indebtedness  to  his  Greek 
originals,  as  happened  in  the  case  of  Vergil.  He  Avas  evidently 
a  true  Roman,  working  under  the  influence  of  his  time,  with 
full  appreciation  of  social  and  pohtical  conditions,  but  with 
a  keen  sense  of  humor  and  an  easy  tolerance  of  human  foible, 
which  rendered  him  at  once  a  poet  of  universal  appeal,  and 
explains  why  he  has  always  had  a  host  of  readers  to  whom 
he  was  a  friend,  rather  than  a  host  of  admirers  to  whom  he 
was  a  great  poet. 

The  Golden  Age  was  also  distinguished  for  the  high  devel- 
opment of  another  variety  of  literature,  the  elegiac.  Elegiac 
couplets  had  been  written  by  Ennius  and  by  Lucilius,  but 
it  was  reserved  for  the  poets  of  this  age,  Tibullus,  Propertius, 
and  especially  Ovid,  to  fix  finally  the  sphere  of  the  elegiac 
couplet  as  the  expression  of  erotic  sentiment.  The  Greek 
practice  had  varied  considerably  and  this  measure  was  used 
for  warlike  hymn  or  moral  precept,  for  love-poem  or  drink- 
ing-song. It  had  in  the  later  Greek  writers,  however,  been 
given  over  particularly  to  love-poetry,  and  found  its  chief 
exponent  in  Callimachus.  He  formed  the  model  of  the 
Roman  poets,  and  Propertius  actually  laid  claim  to  being  his 
Roman  counterpart.  Elegiac  poetry  in  Rome  was  therefore 
artificial  and  intensely  un-Roman,  and,  while  it  reached  a 
technical  perfection  in  Ovid  such  as  it  had  not  reached 
among  the  Greeks  themselves,  the  metre  nevertheless  never 
came  to  be  regarded  as  national  in  the  same  way  that  the 
hexameter  did. 

I  have  said  nothing  at  all  about  the  development  of  prose, 
and  yet  prose,  like  poetry,  has  a  history.  In  the  earliest 
times  records  were  kept  by  priests  and  public  officials  as  well 
as  by  private  families.  These  constitute  the  first  attempts 
at  Latin  prose.  The  most  famous  example  is  the  Laws  of  the 
Twelve  Tables,  which  show  even  in  their  modernized  form  both 
the  power  and  the  limitations  of  legal  Latin,  and  even  thus 
early  foreshadow  the  future  greatness  of  this  form  of  literature. 


GREECE  AND  ROME  291 

Of  the  three  great  departments  of  Latin  prose  —  oratory, 
history,  and  philosoph}^  —  only  the  last  named  shows  any 
strong  Greek  influence  except  in  form.  The  early  Romans  had 
neither  time  nor  inclination  to  philosophize,  and  it  is  only  in 
the  last  century  of  the  Republic  that  philosophy  obtained  ht- 
erary  treatment  at  Rome.  The  chief  prose-writer  is  of  course 
Cicero.  His  philosophical  treatises  were  written  in  his  old 
age,  partly  to  relieve  his  mind  from  sorrow  and  care,  partly 
from  the  teacher's  instinct,  which  seems  to  have  been  always 
latent  in  every  Roman.  Cicero  desired  to  put  Greek  phi- 
losophy within  reach  of  the  Roman  public.  He  shows  in  his 
works  little  evidence  of  original  thinking,  but  his  Greek 
material  is  treated  from  the  Roman  point  of  view  and  the 
wealth  of  illustration  is  entirely  his  own. 

Orator}^  and  history  go  hand  in  hand.  Success  in  pubhc 
life  at  Rome  required  from  the  earliest  times  the  ability  to 
speak.  A  democratic  assembly  is  ruled  more  by  the  emotion 
of  the  moment  than  by  the  dictates  of  quiet  reason,  and  the 
history  of  Rome  is  at  the  same  time  a  history  of  Roman 
oratory.  The  publication  of  speeches  goes  back  as  far  as 
Appius  Claudius,  the  Censor,  but  in  these  early  days  nat- 
ural ability  took  the  place  of  training,  and  it  was  not  till 
the  time  of  Cato  the  Elder  that  the  need  of  training  was  felt. 
It  was  at  this  time  that  the  influx  of  Greek  teachers  of  rhetoric 
into  Rome  provided  in  the  activities  of  the  Grammatici  a  kind 
of  secondary  education  of  a  high  grade,  which  involved  in- 
struction in  Greek  hterature,  rhetoric,  and  oratory.  Even 
the  Hellenophobe  Cato,  in  the  treatise  which  he  composed  for 
his  son's  instruction,  found  it  necessary  to  draw  from  Greek 
models,  especially  Demosthenes,  for  his  illustrations.  At 
this  time  rhetoric  in  Greece  was  in  much  the  same  position 
as  poetry.  The  Asiatic  style  was  dominant,  and  this  corre- 
sponded to  the  Alexandrian  style  in  poetical  composition. 
Art  had  taken  the  place  of  subject-matter,  and,  whereas 
before  this  time  teachers  of  rhetoric  had  aimed  to  reproduce 


292  GREEK  LITERATURE 

the  style  of  Lysias,  with  its  clearness,  its  brevity,  its  delicate 
handling  of  sentence-structure  and  its  discrimination  in  the 
choice  of  words,  as  well  as  its  lack  of  adornment  beyond 
what  really  belonged  to  the  material  and  the  subject,  we 
now  find  exuberance,  redundancy,  conceits  in  the  use  of  words, 
and  such  a  fulsome  employment  of  pedantic  and  bombastic 
imagery  and  metaphor  that  the  idea  is  often  almost  entirely 
obscured  by  the  expression.  Such  a  style  could  not  appeal 
to  a  normal  Roman,  and,  just  as  the  earlier  period  of  Latin 
literature  recalls  to  us  the  noble  age  of  Greek  literature,  so 
Roman  orators  imitated  the  Attic  canon  and  were  but  little 
attracted  to  the  vagaries  of  the  Asiatic  system.  The  educa- 
tion, however,  of  a  Roman  youth  who  expected  to  qualify 
for  public  life  involved  a  careful  study  of  all  the  princij^les 
of  rhetorical  technique  in  which  the  Greek  teachers  were  such 
evident  masters.  And  we  have  a  detailed  account  of  the 
length  to  which  that  study  could  go  in  Cicero's  recital  of  his 
own  training.  In  Cicero's  youth  the  chief  position  in  Ro- 
man oratory  was  held  by  Hortensius  in  succession  to  the  two 
great  orators  of  the  previous  generation,  Antonius  and 
Crassus,  all  names  familiar  to  us  from  Cicero's  own  treatises. 
Their  style,  the  so-called  Attic,  is  best  exemplified  for  us 
in  that  style  which  we  have  come  to  associate  with  the  name 
of  Caesar.  Cicero's  youthful  enthusiasm  at  once  pitted  him 
against  Hortensius,  from  whom  he  was  shortly  to  wrest  his 
glory.  His  own  nature,  being  in  startling  contrast  with  the 
Caesarian  type,  naturally  inclined  him  to  an  exuberant  and 
somewhat  redundant  style,  where  rhetorical  artifice  was  subj  ect 
only  to  an  inherent  good  taste  which  was  to  make  itself  more 
and  more  effective  in  subsequent  years.  In  the  early  speech  for 
Roscius  of  Ameria,  Cicero  appears  as  an  Asiatic,  restrained 
and  modified  by  the  limitations  necessarily  imposed  by  a 
Roman  audience.  This  speech,  probably  the  most  brilliant 
speech  delivered  up  to  that  time  by  a  Roman,  shows  at  once 
a  finish  and  an  elaboration  such  as  had  not  yet  been  known 


GREECE  AND  ROME  293 

in  Latin.  When  it  is  compared  with  early  Roman  efforts, 
the  result  of  Greek  training  is  at  once  evident  in  the  careful 
structure  of  the  period,  the  effective  handling  of  antithesis, 
anaphora,  and  chiasmus,  the  balancing  of  clauses,  assonance, 
repetition,  asyndeton,  and  many  other  devices.  There  is 
also  a  redundant  exuberance  which  Cicero  himself  criticized 
in  his  later  j^ears,  but  which  he  never  entirely  avoided,  or 
deemed  it  desirable  to  avoid.  If  we  compare  with  this  speech 
the  greatest  of  his  oratorical  efforts,  namely  the  Second 
Philippic,  we  find  the  same  general  characteristics,  tempered 
and  modified  by  a  life  of  careful  thinking  and  experimenta- 
tion. In  Cicero's  style,  however,  perhaps  the  most  important 
element  is  the  care  which  he  devoted  to  the  cadence  at  the 
close  of  sentences,  that  rhythm  which  distinguishes  his  speeches 
from  ordinary  prose  as  well  as  from  verse.  It  is  Cicero's 
glory  that  by  the  action  of  his  versatile  Italian  intellect  upon 
the  rules  of  Greek  technique  he  molded  a  Latin  style  which, 
as  a  medium  of  artistic  expression,  has  never  been  surpassed 
and  was  destined  for  centuries  to  be  the  model  of  the  world. 
The  development  of  historical  writing  at  Rome  was  much 
the  same  as  that  of  oratory.  In  many  cases  the  writers  of 
history  were  at  the  same  time  great  political  leaders.  His- 
tory, however,  differed  from  oratory,  from  drama,  from  epic 
in  that  it  was  to  be  read  rather  than  listened  to.  Accordingly 
some  of  the  earliest  of  the  Latin  historians  thought  to  pro- 
vide for  the  permanence  of  their  reputation  by  writing  in 
Greek.  But  this  pedantic  attitude  was  of  short  duration 
and  the  native  Latin  soon  asserted  itself.  Stylistically  the 
development  followed  the  course  of  oratory  and  there  was 
the  same  conflict  in  later  times  between  the  adherents  of  the 
Asiatic  and  the  Attic  systems  of  rhetoric.  In  the  Golden 
Age  the  chief  representative  of  the  Attic  style,  both  in  ora- 
tory and  history,  was  Caesar,  and  the  best  example  of  this 
style  is  to  be  found  in  the  Commentaries.  Educated  in  all 
the  devices  of  the  rhetoric  of  the  period,  like  Cicero  a  student 


294  GREEK  LITERATURE 

of  Molo,  the  noted  teacher  of  Rhodes,  Caesar  was  nevertheless 
deterred  by  the  pecuHar  cast  of  his  mind  from  that  careful 
consideration  of  the  means  of  expression  to  which  Cicero 
had  devoted  himself.  He  wrote  as  he  fought,  we  are  told, 
and  as  Cicero  reached  the  summit  of  success  in  oratory,  so 
Caesar  in  narrative  reached  a  point  of  excellence  which  well 
merited  the  approbation  of  Cicero  and  all  subsequent  critics. 
In  Caesar  we  have  a  style  that  is  essentially  Latin,  not  Greek. 
He  shows,  to  an  extent  attained  by  perhaps  no  other  Latin 
writer,  the  domination  of  the  Roman  over  his  instrument. 
Rhetorical  devices  are  everywhere  evident,  but  these  are  the 
result  of  unconscious  reminiscence,  not  of  design.  The 
effect  of  Caesar's  language  is  due  to  the  man,  not  to  the  words 
themselves.  His  work  was  absolutely  bare  of  adornment, 
nudus  as  Cicero  calls  it,  but  it  was  unadorned  beauty,  venus- 
tus,  as  Cicero  also  calls  it,  the  admiration  and  the  despair 
of  those  who  read  it. 

Contemporary  with  Caesar  was  Sallust.  He,  too,  had 
undergone  the  same  training  as  other  men  of  his  time,  and 
after  a  checkered  public  career  had  devoted  himself  to  the 
writing  of  history.  As  Vergil  and  Propertius  had  claimed 
to  be  the  Theocritus  and  the  Callimachus  of  their  country, 
so  Sallust  aimed  to  be  the  Roman  Thucydides.  That  he 
fell  far  short  of  his  model  is  not  to  be  wondered  at.  He  had 
not  the  genius  of  Tacitus.  But  to  him  perhaps  even  more 
than  to  Thucydides  history  meant  the  study  of  movement 
rather  than  the  narrative  of  facts.  Events  were  to  be 
traced  back  to  their  causes  in  the  nature  of  man.  Thucydides 
may  have  been  the  father  of  the  philosophy  of  history,  but 
without  the  mediation  of  Sallust  his  influence  would  not 
have  gone  beyond  the  Greek  boundaries,  and  if  the  later  de- 
velopment of  history  paid  more  and  more  attention  to  evo- 
lution, this  was  due  to  Sallust's  study  of  his  model.  In  his 
actual  composition  Sallust  shows  but  little  Greek  influence. 
We  find  in  his  writings  manifold  traces  of  his  familiarity 


GREECE  AND  ROME  295 

with  early  Roman  literature,  and  he  merits  perhaps  the  name 
of  the  first  literary  archaist  in  Rome.  Old  phrases,  old 
turns  of  expression,  old  constructions,  old  words  came  as 
naturally  to  him  as  the  forms  of  Shakespeare  and  the  Bible 
have  come  to  many  a  modern  writer.  As  a  result  the  style 
of  Sallust  was  peculiarly  Latin,  and  one  which  after  a  genera- 
tion profoundly  affected  subsequent  writers,  particularly 
those  of  the  Silver  Age. 

It  were  idle  to  trace  the  Greek  influence  at  Rome  beyond 
the  great  authors  of  the  Golden  Age.  With  these  it  cul- 
minated and,  broadly  speaking,  ceased.  To  subsequent 
authors  the  literary  heritage  was  neither  Greek  nor  Latin, 
but  Graeco-Roman,  and  this  influence  was  not  merely  potent 
in  the  case  of  strictly  Roman  authors  but  among  later 
Greek  authors  as  well.  When  we  analyze  the  style  of  a 
Tacitus,  a  Seneca,  a  Quintilian,  a  Pliny,  we  are  led  back 
not  to  Greek  but  to  Roman  sources. 

Our  study  of  the  movements  of  Latin  literature  should 
have  convinced  us  by  this  time  of  the  essential  unreality  of 
Horace's  famous  epigram.  When  Rome  enslaved  Greece, 
she  also  made  Greek  literature  her  handmaid.  In  the 
speech  which  Sallust  in  the  Bellum  Catilinae  puts  into  the 
mouth  of  Caesar,  he  is  represented  as  saying  with  regard  to 
Roman  character:  "Anything  serviceable  noticed  among 
allies  or  enemies  was  followed  up  at  Rome  with  the  utmost 
eagerness ;  men  preferred  to  copy  rather  than  to  envy  good 
ideas."  And  now4iere  is  this  characteristic  more  evident 
than  in  the  domain  of  literature.  It  is  usually  maintained 
that  Greece  gave  to  the  world  the  various  literary  types, 
but  Rome  had  her  epic  and  her  drama,  her  oratory  and  her 
history,  before  her  contact  with  Greece  — ■  rudimentary  to 
be  sure,  but  instinct  with  life.  And  through  all  the  history 
of  Roman  literature  after  the  so-called  Greek  invasion,  we 
see  the  independent  Roman  genius  molding  the  material  to 
suit  its  needs.     None  of  the  great  works  of  Latin  literature 


296  GREEK  LITERATURE 

would  have  been  possible  to  a  Greek.  Even  the  greatest 
Philhellene  of  them  all,  Vergil,  never  ceased  for  a  moment 
to  be  Roman,  and  the  Aeneid,  despite  its  origin,  is  a  Roman 
poem.  The  destiny  of  Rome,  which  Vergil  declares  in  the 
famous  lines 

Tu  regere  imperio  populos,  Romane,  memento 
(Hae  tibi  erunt  artes),  pacisque  imponere  morem, 
Parcere  subiectis  et  debellare  superbos, 

could  never  have  been  penned  by  a  Greek.     The  very  con- 
ception would  have  been  beyond  the  power  of  any  Greek 
leader,  even  a  Pericles.     When  the  Roman  came  to  his  full 
stature  and,  recognizing  the  greatness  of  his  destiny,  took 
measures   to   prepare   himself   therefor,   he    chose    for    his 
teacher  Greece,   but   Greece  did   not  choose  for  her  pupil 
Rome.     Greek  literature  remained  always  to  the  Roman  his 
most  dearly  prized  slave,  but  none  the  less  his  slave.     Properly 
considered  this  reflects  no  discredit   upon  Greece   or  upon 
Greek  literature.     On  the  contrary,  to  have  had  the  mold- 
ing of  the  most  imperial  race  that  up  to  this  time  had  ap- 
peared in  the  world  was  no  mean  glory.     And  to  that  must 
be  added  the  fact  that  the  Greek  spirit,  which  died  in  Greece 
when  Greece  lost  its  freedom,  combining  with  the  Roman 
spirit,  formed  in  union  a  force  which  has  always  been  equal 
to  all  demands,  and  which  has  directed  the  course  of  civiliza- 
tion up  to  this  day.     Even  now  this  combined  spirit,  though 
unmarked,   dominates   every  department  of  human   intel- 
lectual progress ;  and  though  it  may  suffer  eclipse  for  a  time 
by  the  ignorant  and  commercial  spirit  of  modern  philistinism, 
it  will  again  shine  forth  to  illumine  the  path  of  human 
destiny. 

Gonzalez  Lodge. 


INDEX 


Accius  used  Greek  subjects  and  treat- 
ment   in    his    tragedies,    278-79 

Acharnians,  The,  of  Aristophanes,  125 

Achilles,  The  story  of,  and  of  Odys- 
seus, absorbed  the  earlier  hymns 
and  songs,  34 ;  the  wrath  of,  a 
center  of  lost  epics,  36 

Acusilaus  retold  the  epic  legends  in 
prose,  156 ;  devoted  to  fact  more 
than  to  form,    157 

Adolescence,  The  heroic  and  poetic, 
of  the  Greek  race,  3^ 

Adonais,  Shelley's,  262 

Aegean  basin.  Conquest  of  the,  by 
Northerners,  153 ;  the  invaders 
a  song-folk,  154  ;  traditional  poesy 
in  the,  154 ;  attempt  of  Persians 
to  conquer  the,  engaged  Herodo- 
tus, 162  ;  Thucydides  depicts  the 
struggle  of  Athens  to  hold  the, 
162 

Aeneas,  an  aggregation  of  piety,  54 ; 
Roman,  not  Greek,  287 

Aeneid,  The  Iliad  and  Odyssey  and 
the,  9,  41,  49  ;  urunatched  by  any 
Hellenistic  poet,  247  ;  embodiment 
of  the  spirit  of  Rome,  284,  285,  286  ; 
essentially  Homeric,  yet  radically 
different,  287-88 ;  despite  its 
origin,  a  Roman  poem,  296 

Aeolian  lyric,  The,  at  Athens,  94 

Aeschines,  rival  of  Demosthenes, 
199-201;  his  training,  199-200; 
head  of  the  Macedonian  party 
and  against  Demosthenes,  200 ; 
three  great  speeches  of,  200 

Aeschylus,  one  of  the  world's  supreme 
poets,  4 ;  sublime  imagination  of, 
98;  facts  in  the  life  of,  101  ;  plays 
of,  preserved,  101  ;  general  plan  of 
the  Prometheus,  102-4  ;  on  Zeus,  in 
Suppliant    Maidens  and   Agamem- 


non, 104-5 ;  method  of,  in  the  Ores- 
teia,  105-9  ;  the  Agamemnon  and  the 
crime  of  Clytemnestra,  106,  108-9  ; 
vengeance  in  the  Choephori,  106 ; 
remorse  of  Orestes  in  the  Furies  or 
Emnenides,  107-8 ;  rich  language 
and  thought  in,  108 ;  delineation 
of  individual  character  in  Cly- 
temnestra, 109;  suffering  the  re- 
ward of  sin  in,  1 14 ;  influence  of, 
on  Thucydides,   187 

Agamemnon,  Sacrifice  of  Iphigeneia 
by,  106 ;  slain  by  Clytemnestra, 
and  vengeance  of  Orestes,  106 ;  153 

Agamemnon,  The,  102  ;  plot  of,  106 ; 
concentration  of  abilities  of  Aes- 
chylus in  the,   108;    208 

Alcaeus,  Highest  reaches  of  song  in, 
18 ;  MSS.  of,  burned  at  Rome,  60 ; 
fragments  of,  preserved  in  papyri, 
60  ;  the  "  individual  lyric  "  of,  66  ; 
the  sympotic  poetry  of,  72,  75 ;  and 
Archilochus  compared,  76 ;  the 
love   poetry   of,   233,    238 

Alcman,  Fragment  of  a  Parthencion 
by,  65 ;  a  choral  lyrist,  78-79 ; 
strophic  composition  invented  byi 
80  ;   specimens  of  verse  by,  81-82 

Alexander  the  Great  knew  the  Iliad 
by  heart,  38 ;  conscious  of  making 
history,  152  ;  romantic  version  of 
career  of,  found  its  Herodotus  in 
Cleitarchus,  174  ;  effect  of  the  mon- 
archy and  conquests  of,  232 

Alexandrian  Canon  of  lyric  poets,  62n  ; 
six  of  the,  choral  lyrists,  78-79 

Alexandrianism,  Out  of,  came  Latin 
poetry,  266 ;  influence  of,  on 
Virgil,  284 

Amphilruo,  The,  of  Plautus,  re- 
semljles  the  comedy  of  domestic 
life,  145 

Anacreon,  The  "  individual  lyric  "  of, 
66,  72 


297 


298 


INDEX 


Anaxagoras,  Inspiring  teaching  of, 
96;  persecuted  at  Athens,  215 

Anaxinxander's  theory  of  the  infinite, 
212-13 

Anaximenes,  213 

Andocides,  184n 

Andromache,  "smiling  through  her 
tears,"  S;  10;  "that  savage 
woman,"  48;    Hector  to,  55;    153 

Ajitidosis  of  Isocrates,  193 

Antigone,  one  of  the  great  characters 
of  literature,  112 

Antigone,  Inspiration  of  the  great 
chorus  in  the,  97,  111-12;  208; 
knowledge  required  for  clear  under- 
standing of,  236 ;  chorus  to  Eros 
in  the,  238 

Antiphanes  on  the  Middle  Comedy, 
145-46 

Antiphon,  orator,  Thucydides  a 
pupil  of,  184 

Aphrodite  and  Adonis,  Legend  of, 
260-61  ;  festival  in  the  East  in 
honor  of,  260-61 

Apollo,  orders  the  slajdng  of  Clytem- 
nestra  and  Aegisthus,  105,  106 ; 
conflict  of,  and  reconciliation  with 
the  Erinyes,  105,  107 ;  Ion  natural 
son  of,  and  Creusa,   117-18 

Apollonius,  of  Rhodes,  Tale  of  the 
Argonauts  by,  244-46 ;  result  of 
dispute  over  the  Homeric  epic  with 
CaUimachus,  246 

Apoxyomenos,  The,  19 

Apuleius,  The  novels  of,  243-44 

Aratus,  Phuenomena  of,  translated 
into  Latin,  248 

Arcesilas  of  Cyrene,  The  Fourth 
Pythian  Ode  composed  for,  85 

Archilochus,  Preserved  fragment  as- 
signed to,  60 ;  in  elegiac  and  iam- 
bic verse,  09-71 ;  Crusius  on,  69  ; 
two  translations  from,  70 ;  direct 
ancestor  of  Attic  comedy,  72 ; 
poems   of    occasion,    73 

Aristarchus,  the  scholar,    38 

Aristobulus,  173,  175 

Aristophanes  of  Byzantium  on  Me- 
nander,  148 

Aristophanes,  on  Euripides  in  the 
Frogs,  119-20;  Acharnians  of,  125; 
the  comedies  of,  126 ;    characteris- 


tics of  the  comus  in  plays  of,  127; 
structure  of  a  play  of,  128-30 ;  a 
play  of,  called  a  "dramatized  de- 
bate," 129;  the  Frogs  of,  135;  and 
his  fellows  held  to  be  statesmen, 
138  ;  Lucian  on,  139-40 ;  the  pose 
of,  140 ;  on  the  duty  of  the  comic 
poet,  140-41  ;  characterized,  141- 
42 ;  Plato's  epigram  on,  142 ; 
change  of  structure  in  latest  plays 
of,  142 ;  the  Birds  and  Frogs  of, 
more  prized  than  all  of  Menander, 
Plautus,  and  Terence,  255 

Aristotle,  The  energeia  of,  5 ;  called 
Homer  originator  of  the  drama,  7  ; 
definition  of  theme  of  Greek  poetry, 
17  ;  on  poetry,  64n ;  ode  to  Virtue 
or  Excellence  of,  67 ;  Poetics,  92n, 
111,  117,  119;  on  the  principles 
of  Tragedy,  lOOn ;  on  Epicharmus, 
130,  131  ;  on  comedy,  132-33 ; 
called  the  comic  poets  "lampoon- 
ers," 136  ;  on  the  Old  Comedy  and 
the  New  Comedy,  144  ;  never  for- 
gets the  supreme  emphasis  on  man, 
215 ;  diagnoses  the  world's  case, 
223  ;  a  system  of  sciences  in,  224, 
225  ;  the  misnamed  Metaphysics  of, 
224-26  ;  discussion  of  motion,  225— 
26 ;  a  power  in  nature  to  evoke 
activity,  226  ;  conception  of  nature 
as  a  living  process,  226-27 ;  a 
humanist,  227. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  on  praising  Homer, 
6 ;  on  the  moderns  and  the  an- 
tique, 12 ;  pronounced  the  Iliad 
and  Odyssey  the  most  important 
poetical  monuments,  46 ;  on  Ho- 
mer's style,  47 ;  dictum  of,  on  ap- 
plication of  ideas  to  life,  94 ; 
Thyrsis  of,  on  death  of  Clough, 
262 

Arrian,  records  the  truth  about  Alex- 
ander, 173,  175 ;  on  the  visit  of 
the  Amazonian  Queen  to  Alexander, 
175-76 

Asiatic  style.  The,  dominant  in 
rhetoric,  291-92 

Atellane  farce.  The,   131,  271 

Athenaeus  preserved  some  lyrical 
fragments,  62 ;  on  Alcaeus,  75 ; 
story  about  Simonides  in,   83 


INDEX 


299 


Athenians,  Effect  of  Peleponnesian 
^^a^  upon  the,  137,  143;  overthrow 
of  the,  by  Philip  and  Alexander, 
143 ;  delight  of  the,  in  oratory, 
178,   ISO 

Athens,  Dramatic  idealization  of  the 
spiritual  life  of,  in  Plato's  Dia- 
logues, 20  ;  dithjTamb  in  honor  of, 
by  Pindar,  89  ;  Ionian,  Dorian,  and 
Aeolian  poetry  made  themselves 
felt  at,  94 ;  growth  of  democracy 
in,  94 ;  after  the  Persian  Wars 
became  the  intellectual  center  of 
Greece,  95 ;  the  spirit  of  Peri- 
clean,  97  ;  first  tragic  performance 
at,  124 ;  comic  performances  in, 
at  festivals  of  Dionysus,  133 ; 
political  comedy  at,  in  time  of 
Pericles,  136-37 ;  position  of 
comedy  at,  138-39 ;  the  spirit  of, 
150 ;  events  tabulated  as  related 
to  the  annual  archons  of,  157, 
167 ;  the  spiritual  home  of  Herod- 
otus, 158 ;  the  struggle  of,  to  hold 
the  Aegean  basin  told  by  Thucyd- 
ides.  162,  163-65,  166;  Isocrates 
on,  194 ;  devotion  of  Demosthenes 
to,  204,  205,  206;  philosophy  of, 
humanistic,  215;  furnishes  the 
best  product  of  Greek  literature, 
231 

Atomic  philosophers.  Theories  of  the, 
96 

Atomic  theorj'  of  Democritus,  214 

Attic  Comedy,  Earliest  specimens  of, 
125 ;  sources  of  information  about 
origins  of,  125-26 ;  chorus  of  the, 
developed  from  the  comus,  127, 
132  ;  a  composite  structure,  132  ; 
purgation  of  the,  133 ;  admitted 
officially  to  festivals,  133,  137 ; 
not  restricted  to  mythological  sub- 
jects, 134 

Attic  style.  The,  of  Antonius  and 
Crassus,  292 

Avitus,  Q.  Octavius,  Catalogue  of 
larcenies  of  Virgil   by,   41 


B 


Bacchae,     The,     110;    song    of    the 
chorus  from   the,    121-23 


Bacchus,  The  DithjTamb  sung  in 
honor  of,  65 

Bacchylides,  Unique  MS.  of,  dis- 
covered, 60,  89  ;  Songs  of  Victory 
of,  65  ;  nephew  of  Simonides,  89 ; 
poem  of,  on  adventures  of  Theseus, 
89-90 

Ballad  and  epic,  Adaptation  of  the, 
to  the  Homeric  camp-fire  or  My- 
cenaean palace,   14 

Basil   the   Great   on   Homer,   39 

Battus  and  Corydon,  Story  of,  by 
Theocritus,  258 

Biography  a  recognized  literary 
type,  233 

Bion  and  the  legend  of  Aphrodite 
and  Adonis,  260-61  ;  extract  from 
Mrs.  Browning's  translation,  261 ; 
threnody  on,  262 

Birds,  The,  and  Frogs,  of  Aristoph- 
anes, more  prized  than  all  of 
Menandcr,  Plautus,  and  Terence, 
255 

Book-lyric,  No,  existed  before  Alex- 
andrian times,  63-64 

Brasidas  captured  Amphipolis,  104 ; 
Thucydides  on,  165 

Brougham,  Lord,  on  oratory  in 
Athens,  180 ;  on  Aeschines,  201  ; 
on    Demosthenes,    204-5,    207 

Bury,  Prof.  J.  B.,  on  the  aniina 
naturaliter  pagana,  23 ;  on  sages 
replacing  heroes,  155  ;  on  Herodo- 
tus, 159;  on  Thucydides,  163; 
177  ;  on  the  speeches  in  Thucyd- 
ides, 170 

Butcher,  S.  H.,  Aspects  of  Greek 
Genius,  114n;  Aristotle's  Theory 
of  Poetry,  129n  ;  on  finish  of  work- 
manship in  Demosthenes,  179; 
on  the  career  of  Demosthenes, 
205-6 ;  Some  Aspects  of  the  Greek 
Genius,  238n 


Caesar,  chief  representative  of  the 
Attic  style,  in  Commentaries,  293- 
94  ;  Cicero  on,  294 

Callimachus,  Hymns  antl  epigrams 
of,  237  ;  tired  of  the  length  of  the 
Homeric  epic,  246-47  ;    the  Hecale 


300 


INDEX 


of,  247 ;  model  of  the  Roman  poets, 
290 

Callisthenes,  173 

Canon  of  ten  best  orators,  Antiphon 
at  head  of,  184 

Capps,  Edward,  Comedy,  124-51. 
For  analysis  see  Comedy 

Carlyle,  on  the  Iliad,  46 ;  Goethe's 
hail  to,   192-93 

Cato,  authority  that  early  Romans 
sang  hero  songs  at  banquets,  270 ; 
the  Hellenophobe,  drew  from  Greek 
models,  291 

Catullus,  Shorter  poems  of,  epigrams, 
254 ;  and  his  sensualism,  283 ; 
writer  of  pure  song  bursting  the 
bonds  of  Greek  conventionalism, 
283-84 

Chanson  de  Roland,  The,  good  for 
dissection,  18 

Chapman,  The  Spirit  Elysian  in,  5 ; 
translation    of    Homer,    6 

Charon  of  Lampsacus,  157 

Choephori,  The,  of  Aeschylus,  102, 
106 

Choral  hymn,  may  be  found  in 
Homer,  7 ;  adaptation  of  the,  to 
conservative  ideals,  14 

Choral  lyric,  The,  mainly  Doric,  79 ; 
loss  of  music  to  the,  79-80 ;  plan 
of  composition,  80;  invention  of 
Alcman,  80 ;  specimens  from  Ale- 
man,  81 ;  Threnoi  and  an  En- 
komion  of  Simonides,  83-84 ;  in 
Pindar  the  greatest  glory  of  the, 
84 ;  composition  of  the  odes  of 
Pindar,  85-88;  Bacchylides,  89- 
90 

Chorus,  The,  of  Old  Attic  Comedy, 
developed  from  the  comus,  127, 
142 ;  in  a  play  of  Aristophanes, 
128-29;  skilfully  used,  142;  dis- 
appears from  the  dialogue  and 
action,  142-43 

Cicero,  opinion  of  Philistus,  171  ;  in- 
fluence of  Isocrates  through,  196 ; 
acknowledged  dependence  of  Latin 
upon  Greek,  267  ;  on  songs  to  heroes 
at  early  Roman  banquets,  270 ;  the 
poem  of  Lucretius  given  to  the 
world  by,  282 ;  speech  of,  for 
Roscius,  292 ;   Second  Philippic  of, 


293 ;  molded  a  Latin  style  unsur- 
passed, 293,  on  Caesar,  294 

Ciris,   The,  attributed  to  Virgil,  247 

City-states,  The,  of  the  fifth  century, 
230-31 ;  converted  into  a  mon- 
archy, 232 ;  released  from  bond- 
age, 232 ;  homogeneity  of  life  in, 
237 

Cleitarchus,  a  sovereign  name  in 
Greek  historiography,  152,  153, 
176;  the  Herodotus  of  Alexan- 
der's career,  174-75 ;  discredited 
by  Plutarch,  175 ;  adopted  count- 
less  bold  inventions,    176 

Cleon,  Aristophanes  leader  of  oppo- 
sition to,  138 ;  denounced  by 
Aristophanes,  140 

Coleridge,  The  two  impulses  of,  4 ; 
on  the  parting  of  Hector  and 
Andromache,  8 ;  on  the  charac- 
ters in  Homer,   10 

Comedy  (Edward  Capps)  124-51  : 
Icaria,  birth-place  of  Comedy  and 
Tragedy,  124-25 ;  Attic  predeces- 
sors of  Aristophanes,  125 ;  the 
problem  of  origin,  126 ;  Aristoph- 
anes and  Menander,  126 ;  de- 
fined, 127 ;  the  Dionysiac  comus, 
127  ;  characteristics  of  the  comus 
in  Aristophanes,  127 ;  the  plot  of 
an  early  play,  128 ;  the  parabasis, 
in  two  parts,  128-29 ;  the  short 
episodes,  129  ;  contrast  of  the  two 
parts,  129 ;  episodes  traced  to  the 
Dorian  comedy  of  Epicharmus, 
130  ;  origin  of  the  Dorian  comedy, 
130-31 ;  the  comedy  of  Epichar- 
mus, 131-32 ;  Old  Attic  comedy  a 
composite  structure,  132-33  ;  per- 
formed at  the  City  Dionysia  and 
the  Lenaea,  133 ;  three  great 
periods,  the  Old,  the  Middle, 
and  the  New.  134;  not  restricted 
as  to  subjects,  134-35 ;  charac- 
teristic of  the  Old,  political  satire 
and  personal  lampooning,  135-42  ; 
license  luider  Pericles,  136-37 ; 
popularity  of  Cratinus,  137 ;  this, 
not  the  traditional  view,  138 ;  the 
purpose  of  comedy,  138-39 ;  Lu- 
cian  on,  139-40 ;  testimony  of  the 
comic    poets    themselves,    140-41 ; 


INDEX 


301 


Aristophanes  the  culmination  of 
the  Old,  141 ;  gradual  change  in, 
following  political  crises,  142^4  ; 
Aristotle  on  changes  in,  144 ; 
human  nature  and  real  life  in  the 
Middle,  144-45 ;  Antiphanes  on, 
145-46 ;  poets  of  the  New, 
dropped  m>'tholog>-  and  gave 
comedy  of  manners,  146-47 ;  pas- 
sion of  love  introduced  in,  147-48  ; 
the  New,  reached  its  highest  point 
in  Menander,  148 ;  appreciation 
of  Menander,  149-51 ;  turns  to 
universal  phases  of  individual 
experience,  233 ;  Hellenistic,  free 
from  pedantry,  247 ;  primarily 
a  product  of  Athens,  254 ;  inno- 
cent of  structural  unitj%  254 ; 
the  New  Hellenistic,  realistic,  254 ; 
plots  monotonous,  255 ;  ethical 
standards  low-,  255  ;  plays  of  Plau- 
tus  and  Terence  adaptations  of, 
255 ;  leads  to  the  modern  comedy 
of  manners  and  intrigue,  256 ;  is 
a  regeneration  rather  than  a 
creation,  256 ;  the  mime  closely 
related  to,  256 

Composition,  Three  principal  styles 
of,  distinguished  by  Dionysius, 
185;  the  "austere"  in  Thucyd- 
ides,  186;  the  "smooth"  in  Isoc- 
rates,  190 

Comus,  The  Dionysiac,  127 

CorcjTa,  Athenian  alliance  with,  166 

Corinna,  Fragments  of,  preserved  in 
papjTi,  60 

Corinth,  The  cult  of  Dionysus  at, 
130-31  ;     a    city-state,    230 

Cosmologies,  The  Greek,  as  pic- 
tures, 214-15 

Cosmologists,  Story  of  the  Greek, 
213,  216 

Cosmopolitanism,  Traces  of,  in  fifth 
century,  234 ;  characteristic  of 
the   Hellenistic   period,    235 

Cosmos,  The,  in  early  Greek  philos- 
ophy, 211-15 

Crassus,  The  Attic  style  of,  292 

Crates  put  aside  lampooning  and 
"generalized"    his    plots,    144 

Cratinus  burlesqued  the  Judgment 
of  Paris,    134 ;    political   satire  in 


earliest     fragments     of,     135 ;      a 

shameless    lampooner,     137 ;      the 

"policy"   of,  opposed   to  Pericles, 

138 
Cratippus,   historian,    171 
Critical  spirit,  The  new  Ionian,  155 ; 

discredited    the    Homeric    poems, 

156 
Cumae    gave    the    alphabet    to    the 

Romans,  273 


D 


Dante,  The  bitter  passion  of,  5 ; 
classical  and  biblical  themes  in,  26  ; 
not  indebted  to  Homer,  42 ;  and 
Homer,  57 

Daphnis,  The  legend  of,  as  told  by 
Theocritus,  259-60 

Darius,  The  story  of  the  invasion  of 
Europe  by,  eclipsed  the  achieve- 
ments of  the  heroic   age,    156 

Demetrius  Poliorcetes,  Flippant 
paean  of  praise  to,  235 

Democritus,  The  atomic  theory  of, 
214;  his  golden  sayings,  214; 
lived  and  died  a  colonist,  215;  the 
world  of,  226 

Demosthenes,  Skill  of,  9 ;  duel  of, 
wdth  King  Philip,  20 ;  unwilling 
to  speak  off-hand,  179 ;  extreme 
care  of,  in  composition,  179 ;  Dio- 
nysius on,  179;  Butcher  on,  179, 
205-6 ;  stories  of  the  life  and 
training  of,  202 ;  indebtedness  of, 
to  Thucydides,  Isacus,  and  Isoc- 
rates,  202-3 ;  possibly  pupil  of 
Plato,  203 ;  on  the  foundations 
of  a  state,  203 ;  and  duties  of  a 
statesman  203-4 ;  work  of,  in  the 
law-courts,  204 ;  arrangement  in 
his  speeches,  204  ;  Lord  Brougham 
on,  204-5 ;  the  voice  of  a  lost 
cause,  205  ;  public  career  of,  205-6  ; 
always  an  Athenian,  at  last  an 
Hellene,  206 ;  rose  to  the  moral 
height  of  the  great  oath,  206-7 ; 
Jebb  and  liroughara  on,  207 ; 
greatest  passages  of,  feed  the 
spirit,  208 

Did(!rot,  on  the  realism  of  the  Greeks, 
17 


302 


INDEX 


Dinarchus,  184n 

Dionysia,  City,  Comedy  admitted 
to  programme  of  the,  133 

Dionysiaca,  The,  37 

Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus  preserved 
a  vaUiable  fragment  of  Sappho, 
62 ;  on  the  Persian  Wars,  157 ; 
on  Herodotus,  161-62 ;  on  the 
painstaking  of  Demosthenes,  179  ; 

•  on  styles  of  composition,  185-86 ; 
on  the  genius  of  Thucydides,  187  ; 
onLysias,  189,  190,  191  ;  "smooth" 
or  "florid"  style  of  composition,  in 
Isocrates,  194-95;  on  passages 
from  Isocrates  and  Demosthenes, 
195 ;  on  Hyperides,  197 ;  on  De- 
mosthenes' debt  to  Thucydides,  202 

Dionysus,  Tragedy  an  element  in 
the  festival  of,  99 ;  gave  the  vine 
to  Icarius,  124 ;  comedy  sprang 
from  the  rites  and  practices  in 
worship  of,  124,  126 ;  the  spring 
festival  of,  124,  130 ;  the  imps  of, 
among  the  Dorians,   130-31 

Dithyramb,  The,  sung  in  honor  of 
Bacchus,  65  ;  by  Timotheus,  65 ; 
new  popularity  for,  90 

Dorian  comedy,  The,  perfected  by 
Epicharmus,  130,  131-32;  ribaldry 
in,  130-31 ;    no  chorus  in,  132 

Drama,  the.  Homer  called  origina- 
tor of,  7 ;  orderly  development 
through,  14 ;  teacher  and  enter- 
tainer of  triumphant  democracy, 
15  ;  source  of  all  other,  19  ;  unity 
of,  contrasted  with  the  Eliza- 
bethan, 25-26  ;  had  its  traditional 
formulas,  26 ;  nascent  in  Homer, 
41  ;  essentially  Attic,  58  ;  contains 
some  of  the  noblest  lyrics,  58 ; 
development  of,  in  the  fifth  cen- 
tury, 67,  92 ;  became  the  most 
distinctive  form  of  poetry,  95 

Duris  of  Samos,  152 ;  History  of 
Greece  by,  176 


E 


Elegiac  distich,  Form  of  the,  66 
Elegiac  poetry,   intoned  or  chanted, 
to  the  flute,  63  ;    included  in  lyric, 
63  ;   66,  67,  68 ;   success  of  Archilo- 


chus  with,  69  ;  of  the  Golden  Age, 
290 ;  TibuUus,  Propertius,  and 
Ovid,  290 ;  artificial  and  un- 
Roman,  290 

Elegiac  verse,  in  effect  the  prose  of 
Greek  literature  clown  to  the  fifth 
century,  68  ;  came  from  the  hexam- 
eter of  the  epic,  68 ;  use  of,  by 
Archilochus,  69 

Elegy,  The,  may  be  found  in  Homer, 
7,  69 ;  from  the  Greek  standpoint, 
248-49  ;    variety  of  themes  in,  248 

Empedocles  and  the  architects  of 
nature,  213-14 ;  startling  and 
minute  observations  in  the  frag- 
ments of,  214 

Enkomion,  The,  or  Laudation,  65 ; 
an,  of  Simonides,  83-84 

Ennius  claimed  to  be  the  reincarna- 
tion of  Homer,  267 ;  adapted 
Greek  comedy  and  tragedy  275 ; 
molded  the  Roman  tongue  to  the 
hexameter,  275-76 ;  developed  an 
almost  new  vocabulary,  276  ;  wrote 
elegiac  poetry,  290 

Ephorus  of  Cyme,  a  sovereign  name 
in  Greek  historiography,  153,  176 ; 
the  Hellcnica  of,  171-72 ;  the 
Vulgate  of  Greek  history,  172  ;  a 
standard,  174 

Epic,  the.  Orderly  development  of,  14  ; 
adaptation  of,  to  Homeric  camp- 
fire  or  palace,  14 ;  materials  for 
theory  of,  18 ;  had  its  traditional 
formulas,  26 ;  antecedents  of, 
beyond  the  vision  of  the  Hellenes, 
34 ;  similarity  in  form  to  Homer 
gave  name  epic  to  poems  of  Hesiod, 
36 ;  the  heroic,  occupies  a  place 
peculiarly  its  own,  50-51 ;  echo  of 
lyric  voices  in,  58 ;  decay  of,  after 
700  B.C.,  67;  vast  popularity  of, 
68 ;  a  single,  in  Hellenistic  litera- 
ture, 244 

Epic  poetry  (Herbert  Weir  Smyth) 
34-57  :  The  best  comes  first,  34, 
41 ;  Homer  and  the  Homeric 
Question,  34-35 ;  no  rivals  to 
Iliad  and  Odyssey,  36 ;  Greek  epic 
lives  only  through  Homer,  36-37  ; 
universality  and  permanent  value 
of,  37  ;    Homer  the  teacher-poet  of 


INDEX 


303 


the  nation,  3S-40  ;  every  form  of 
literature  nascent  in  Homer,  41 ; 
Rome  the  first  station  in  progress 
to  the  modern  world,  41 ;  Virgil 
preeminent  in  Western  Empire  in 
Middle  Ages,  42 ;  passion  for 
Homer  in  16th  century,  43  ;  Homer 
the  norm  for  all  other  epic  poets, 
43 ;  Homer  in  France,  Germany, 
and  England,  44-46 ;  Homer's 
diction,  47  ;  the  age  he  mirrored, 
47-48 ;  Iliad  and  Odyssey  akin 
both  to  popular  and  literary  epic, 
49;  not  subject  to  tyranny  of  a 
style,  51 ;  Homer's  nearness  to 
nature,  52 ;  man  the  central  and 
driving  force  in,  52 ;  denizens  of 
the  human  sphere  in,  53  ;  men  and 
women  of  Homer,  54 ;  the  im- 
mortals of,  56-57  ;  Homer  gives  the 
very  essence  of  the  Greek  spirit,  57 

Epicharmus,  founder  of  literary 
comedy,  125 ;  perfected  Dorian 
comedy,  130 ;  account  of,  130 ; 
the  comedy  of,  simple  in  structure, 
131-32 

Epicureanism,  not  hedonism  but  a 
system  of  quietism,  282 ;  adopted 
by  Lucretius,  282 ;  Horace  great 
representative  of,  288 

Epicurus,  The  crudities  of,  trans- 
muted by  Lucretius,  282 

Epigram,  suggested  in  Homer,  7 ; 
in  Greek  Anthology  on  the  nine 
poets  of  the  Alexandrian  ("anon, 
62n ;  Simonides  skilled  in,  66 

Epigram,  The,  free  from  pedantry, 
247 ;  defined,  248 ;  wide  range  of 
subject  in,  249,  251 ;  early  use  of, 
249-50;  the  literary,  250-51; 
essentially  Hellenistic,  250;  the 
inscription  expanded  into  the  im- 
aginative poem,  251-53 ;  love  in 
the,  253-54 ;  the  satirical,  254 ; 
influence  of,  on  Latin  poetry,  254 ; 
types  from  real  life  in,  254 

Eratostheii.es,  The,  only  speech  spoken 
Vjy  Lysias,  191 

Euhemerus  and  his  ideal  Paradise, 
242-43 

Euripidcaii  drama.  Sophisticated  con- 
tent of  the,  14 


Euripides,  From  Sophocles  to,  4 ; 
Murray's  transfiguring  translations 
of,  12 ;  the  classic  ideal  broken  by, 
12-13  ;  Homer  above,  83  ;  the  poet 
of  religious  revolt,  96-97,  115;  the 
humanity  in,  98 ;  prophet  of  a  new 
era,  99,  118,  120;  lack  of  artistic 
unity  in  some  plays  of,  99 ;  ac- 
count of,  115-16;  eighteen  plays 
of,  preserved,  110;  made  histrionic 
appeal  to  divine  agency,  117; 
plots  of,  inferior  to  those  of  Soph- 
ocles, 117;  has  great  power  in 
delineation  of  character,  117; 
impatience  of,  with  the  popular 
religion,  117;  story  of  Ion,  117— 
IS;  fondness  of,  for  debate,  119; 
ridiculed  by  Aristophanes  in  the 
Frogs,  119-20;  Hecuba's  invoca- 
tion to  Zeus,  120  ;  his  passion  for  jus- 
tice, 120  ;  sympathy  of,  with  man's 
life,  120-21  ;  under  an  eclipse,  121  ; 
intense  feeling  of,  for  nature,  121  ; 
chorus  from  the  Bacchae,  trans- 
lated by  Murray,  122-23;  the 
great  forerunner  of  the  Hellenistic 
period,  234  ;  love  in,  238 


Fabula  Atellana,  The,  131,  271 

Fescennine  verses,  The,  271 ;  pos- 
sibly in  Saturnian  meter,  272 

Fictitious  prose  narrative,  242-44 ; 
Herodotus,  242 ;  Utopias  of  the 
philosophers,  242 ;  the  Milesian 
Tales,  242 ;  Hecataeus  and  Euhe- 
merus, 242-43 ;  the  Alexander- 
romance,  243 ;  the  Greek  ro- 
mances, 243 ;  trend  of,  away 
from  realism,  244 

Funeral  oration  by  Pericles  in  Thucyd- 
ides,  an  encomium  of  Athens, 
86,  169,  184,  188 

Funeral  Oration  for  Lcosthenes  and 
his  comrades  by  Hyperidcs,  197- 
98 

G 

Gnomic  poets,  The,  quoted  and 
paraphrased,  26 ;  may  be  f<juiid  in 
Homer,  7 


304 


INDEX 


Gods,  Human  locality  of  the  Ho- 
meric, 11,  54;  idealistic  conception 
of  the,  shaped  more  by  Homer 
than  by  Hesiod,  38 ;  belief  in 
visible  presence  of  the,  48 ;  vir- 
tually men,  56  ;  older  conceptions 
of  the,  rejected,  96-97,  234-35; 
existence  of,  denied,  234  ;  ration- 
alizing the,  and  deification  of  men, 
234-35 

Gorgias,  legitimate  successor  of 
Homeric  rhapsodes,  178 ;  oratory 
begins  with,  181,  183;  poetical 
character  of  his  speech,  183-84 ; 
founder  of  artistic  prose,  184 ; 
influence  of,  on  Thucydides,  184, 
187;  Isocrates  a  pupil  of,  192  ;  ob- 
ject of,  oral  and  extemporary  elo- 
quence, 193 

Greece,  What  things  the  world  has 
inherited  from,  have  their  foun- 
tain-head in  Homer,  41 ;  first 
association   of   Rome   with,    273 

Greek,  Our  notions  of  what  is  pe- 
culiarly, obtained  from  the  clas- 
sical period,  229 

Greek  influence  upon  Latin  Litera- 
ture (Gonzalez  Lodge)  267-96 : 
Latin  authors  acknowledged  their 
debt  to  Greek  authors,  267 ;  lost 
sight  of  for  ten  centuries,  268 ; 
great  amount  of  Greek  in  Latin 
noted,  268 ;  controversy  over 
Latin  and  Greek,  268-69  ;  pouring 
of  Greek  fountains  into  an  always 
Roman  stream,  269 ;  the  first  five 
hundred  years  of  Rome,  269-72 ; 
Rome  and  Sparta  compared,  270 ; 
abundance  of  literary  material  of 
the  early  Romans,  270-71  ;  the 
Saturnian  meter  better  adapted  to 
Latin  than  to  Greek,  272 ;  ex- 
pansion of  Rome,  272-73 ;  first 
contact  of  Rome  with  Greece  in 
third  century,  273 ;  absorption 
of  Greek,  273 ;  native  Roman 
literature  gave  place  to  Greek, 
274 ;  Livius  Andronicus,  274 ; 
Naevius,  274-75 ;  Ennius,  275 ; 
and  the  full  tide  of,  276 ;  period 
of  Roman  comedy  adapted  from 
the  New  Comedy,  276-78 ;    Greek 


subjects  and  treatment  in  the 
tragedies  of  Accius  and  Paeuvius, 
278-79 ;  nine  plays  of  the  Younger 
Seneca  treat  Greek  themes,  279 ; 
conspicuously  absent  in  Lucilius, 
280 ;  the  pre-Ciceronian  period 
essentially  Roman,  280-81 ;  new 
influences  at  work,  Greek  phi- 
losophy and  Alexandrian  poetry, 
281 ;  Lucretius  and  Epicurean- 
ism, 281-83 ;  Catullus  and  his 
Roman  spirit,  282-83 ;  Greek 
influence  on  Virgil,  284-88 ; 
Horace  the  great  representative  of 
Epicureanism,  288 ;  Greek  lit- 
erary forms  domesticated  in  Latin 
by  Horace,  289 ;  elegiac  poetry 
intensely  un-Roman,  290 ;  in 
prose  philosophy  only  shows  strong 
Greek     influence,      291 ;       Cicero, 

291,  292-93;  Greek  teachers  of 
rhetoric  in  Rome,  291 ;  Roman 
orators  imitated  the  Attic  canon, 
292 ;    the  Attic    style    in    Caesar, 

292,  293-94;  Sallust  the  Roman 
Thucydides,  294 ;  but  peculiarly 
Latin,  295 ;  ceased  with  the  great 
authors  of  the  Golden  Age,  295 ; 
Roman  genius  molded  material 
to  suit  its  needs,  295-96 ;  com- 
bined spirit  of  Greece  and  Rome 
dominates  all  intellectual  progress, 
296.     See  also  Literature,  Greek. 

Greek    Romances,    The,    243 
Greeks,      Cultivated,     and      modern 
savants,   compared,   24-29 

H 

Hecale,  The,  an  epic  by  Callimachus, 

247 
Hecataeus  brought  the  Orient  home 

to    the    Greek    fancy,     156,     157 ; 

Herodotus    borrowed    from,     161 ; 

Utopian   fiction   of,    242-43 
Hellanicus    established    first    annual 

system     of     chronology,      156-57, 

162 ;    devoted    to    fact    more  than 

to    form,     157,    171 ;      Thucydides 

an   advance  upon,    167 
Hellas,  The  brain  and  poetic  genius 

of  early,  3 ;    the  younger,  the  only 


INDEX 


305 


true  Greece,  5 ;  the  united  voice 
of,  proclaimed  Homer  "The  Poet," 
38  ;  religion  of,  distinguished  from 
the  polytheisms  of  the  East,  38 

Hellenes,  Antecedents  of  the  epic,  be- 
yond the  vision  of  the,  34 ;  strife 
of,  with  Barbarians  the  greater 
theme  of  Herodotus,  160-61 

Hellenes,  Ionian,  Literary  expres- 
sion among  the,    171-72 

Hellenic  conquest  of  Asia,  The,  and 
Cleitarchus,  152 

Hellenism,  Euripides  and  Plato  rep- 
resentatives and  destroyers  of, 
13 ;  the  comedy  of  manners  of 
Menander  a  great  contribution 
of,  to  literature,  126  ;  Menander  the 
first  great  poet  of,  150 ;  Butcher 
on  the  great  ideas  of,  150 ;  the 
civilization  of,  anticipated  by 
Isocrates,  194 

Hellenistic  I,iterature  (Henry  W. 
Prescott)  229-66:  Mistaken  view 
of  work  of  Alexandrian  period, 
229-30  ;  development  rather  than 
degeneration,  230 ;  the  city-states 
of  the  fifth  centurj^  230-32 ;  the 
monarchy  of  Alexander  released  the 
municipality  from  bondage,  232 ; 
indi\-idual  opportunity  widened, 
232 ;  biography  a  literary  type, 
233  ;  interpretation  of  environment 
an  evolution,  233 ;  traces  of  in- 
dividualism and  realism  in  fifth 
century,  234 ;  spread  of  skepti- 
cism, 234-35 ;  cosmopolitanism, 
individualism,  realism,  and  ration- 
alism characteristics  of  the  period, 
235 ;  essentially  modern,  236  ;  a 
complicated  phenomenon,  236-37 ; 
seriously  affected  by  skepticism, 
237 ;  sentimental  legends  replace 
the  old  myths,  237-38;  love- 
stories  classical  and  realistic,  238- 
39 ;  conscious  effort  to  achieve 
style,  239-40 ;  oratory  gave  place 
to  declamation,  240  ;  scanty  re- 
mains of  Hellenistic  prose,  240 ; 
no  masterpieces  in  philosophy, 
241 ;  essays  in  history,  241  ;  fic- 
titious prose  narrative,  Herodotus, 
242  ;    philosophical    Utopias,   242  ; 


the  Milesian  Tales,  242 ;  the 
Alexander-romance,  243 ;  the 
Greek  Romances,  243^4  ;  poetry, 
the  epic  in  Tale  of  the  Argonauts 
by  Apollonius,  244-46;  Callima- 
chus  and  the  epyllium,  or  short 
epic,  246-47;  pedantry  a  blemish, 
247-48  ;  elegy  and  epigram,  248 ; 
the  elegj%  248-49 ;  the  epigram, 
249-54  ;  in  inscriptions,  249-50  ; 
the  literary  epigram  a  Hellenistic 
creation,  250-51  ;  inscriptions, 
251-53 ;  love  epigrams,  253-54 ; 
comedJ^  254-56 ;  of  the  classical 
period  and  the  New  Comedy,  254- 
55  ;  Menander,  255-56  ;  the  mime, 
256-57;  work  of  Herondas,  257; 
Theocritus  and  the  old  Greek  re- 
finement and  taste,  257-60 ;  the 
pastoral  the  mime  of  country  life, 
259-60 ;  Bion,  260-62 :  the  second 
mime  of  Theocritus,  262-64; 
Travels  of  Theocritus,  265 ;  other 
forms  of,  265 ;  a  natural  out- 
growth of  social  conditions,  265-66 

Heraclitus,  Influence  of,  95 ;  on  the 
purposes  of  God,  104n;  the  cos- 
mos of  fire  everlasting  of,  213 

Herodotus,  Symmetry  in  narrative 
of,  9  ;  nonchalance  of  Ionian  style 
of,  16;  unapproachalile  type  of 
historian  confeur,  19 ;  the  Greek 
as  seen  in,  24-25  ;  Athenian  ideals 
pictured  by,  97 ;  a  sovereign  name 
in  Greek  historiography,  152,  153, 
176;  the  treasures  reduced  to 
literary-  form  by,  157-58;  gave 
form  to  beliefs  of  Periclean  party 
on  Persian  Wars,  158-59 ;  worth 
of,  as  an  historian,  159 ;  a  collec- 
tor on  a  vast  scale,  159 ;  greater 
and  narrower  themes  of,  160;  the 
prose  Homer  of  the  Persian  \\'ars, 
100-61 ;  Dionj-sius  of  Halicarnas- 
sus  on,  161-62 ;  right  of,  to  be 
called  "The  Father  of  History," 
162 ;  a  considerable  part  of,  fic- 
tion, 242 

Herondas,  The  mimes  of,  256-57 ; 
repellent  realism  in,  257 ;  shows 
the  Greeks  were  thoroughly  hu- 
man, 257 


306 


INDEX 


Hesiod,  Works  and  Days,  11 ;  why 
poems  of,  are  called  epic,  36 ;  the 
chronological  and  didactic  poems 
of,  156 ;  devoted  to  fact  more  than 
to  form,  157,  171 ;  inspired  Vir- 
gil's Georgics,   284,   286 

Hexameter,  Perfected  harmonies  of 
the,  3  ;  the  Latin,  never  achieved 
the  lightness  of  the  Greek,   276 

Hipponax,  The  iambic  verse  of,  cul- 
tivated by  Herondas,  256 

Historical  criticism  and  science,  Thu- 
cydides  the  creator  of,  162-3 

Historiography,  Greek,  ends  with 
the  historians  of  Alexander's  career, 
152,  176  ;  sovereign  names  in,  153, 
176 ;    a  curious  amenity  of,  157 

History  (B.  Perrin)  152-77:  Spec- 
tacular struggles  and  their  chron- 
iclers, 152-53  ;  the  Homeric  poems, 
153-55 ;  period  of  scientific  in- 
quiry, 155-56 ;  truth  stranger 
than  fiction,  156 ;  the  invasions  of 
Darius  and  Xerxes,  156 ;  Hellani- 
cus  and  the  first  annual  system  of 
chronology,  156-57 ;  Thucydides 
and  his  predecessors,  157  ;  records 
and  traditions  of  the  Persian  Wars, 
157-58 ;  reduced  to  splendid 
form  by  Herodotus,  158-62 ;  Peri- 
clean  Athens  and  the  Persian 
Wars,  158-59  ;  Xerxes'  invasion  of 
Europe,  160  ;  Herodotus  the  prose 
Homer  of  the  Persian  Wars,  160- 
62 ;  Thucydides  and  the  Pelopon- 
nesian  War,  162-70 ;  his  state- 
ment of  purpose,  163-64 ;  the 
man  and  his  manners  of  writing, 
164-69;  Xenophon,  170-71; 
Cratippus,  171  ;  a  new  political 
idea,  and  a  new  literary  form,  171  ; 
Ephorus  and  his  Hellenica,  171- 
72  ;  Theopompus,  172  ;  Alexander 
and  his  retinue  of  historians,  172- 
74 ;  literature  of  pure  romance, 
174 ;  Cleitarchus  of  Colophon, 
174-75 ;  Alexander-romance  in 
the  making,  175 ;  the  sovereign 
names  among  the  Greeks  them- 
selves, 153,  176  ;  permanent  value 
of,  in  Herodotus  and  Thucydides, 
176 ;  marks  of  a  good  historian,  177 


History,  Orderly  development 
through,  14 ;  recited  in  agonistic 
competitions,  16 ;  the  Greek  con- 
ception of,  28 ;  in  Herodotus  and 
Thucydides  a  real  form  of  litera- 
ture, 95  ;  essays  in,  241  ;  develop- 
ment of,  at  Rome,  293-95 ;  Caesar, 
293-94;  Sallust,  294-95;  later 
historians,  295 

Homer,  the  beginning,  3 ;  how  to 
understand,  3,  35 ;  Macaulay'a 
explanation  of,  3 ;  one  of  the 
world's  supreme  poets,  4,  8 ;  the 
fire  and  divine  intensity  of,  5-6 ; 
Landor  on,  7 ;  called  originator 
of  drama  by  Plato  and  Aristotle, 
7,  53 ;  what  may  be  found  in,  7-8, 
41,  47;  the  universal  genius  of, 
8 ;  portrayal  of  character  in,  10, 
53-56;  style  in,  11,  47;  better 
known  at  Athens  by  recital  than 
by  the  eye,  16 ;  no  sense  of  high- 
est poetry  acquired  without  know- 
ing, 19 ;  the  common  storehouse 
of  imagery  and  phrase,  26,  47 ; 
we  yearn  for,  30,  31 ;  on  the  gifts 
of  the  gods,  32 ;  source  of  all  elo- 
quence in  Greece,  34 ;  inexhaus- 
tible vitality  of,  has  been  longer 
contemporaneous,  37 ;  a  constant 
influence  in  European  literature, 
37  ;  a  national  poet,  37  ;  a  teacher- 
poet,  38-39  ;  all  conditions  of  men 
knew,  38 ;  works  of,  the  epitome 
of  all  knowledge  to  the  Greeks,  39 ; 
Plato's  attack  on,  39 ;  words  of, 
always  on  the  lips  of  men,  40 ; 
permanent  value  of,  40 ;  estab- 
lished a  standard  of  distinction, 
41 ;  the  first  poet  ever  translated, 
41 ;  controversy  over  relative 
merits  of  Virgil  and,  42 ;  Dante 
on,  42 ;  devoured  by  the  Human- 
ists, 43 ;  in  the  culture  of  modern 
Europe,  43 ;  the  ancients  and  the 
moderns,  43-44 ;  the  rediscovery 
of,  44 ;  in  France  and  Germany, 
44-45 ;  in  England,  45-46 ;  what 
the  claim  of,  in  the  culture  of  the 
future,  46 ;  the  qualities  of,  47 ; 
an  encyclopedist,  47-48 ;  per- 
manence  as   a   poet   insured,    49 ; 


INDEX 


307 


characteristics  of,  50-51 ;  nature 
in,  51-52 ;  moves  in  the  world  of 
man,  52-53 ;  the  men  and  women 
of,  53-56 ;  limitless  faculty  of 
invention  of,  53 ;  heroes  of,  54 ; 
the  gods  of,  56-57 ;  the  province 
of,  57 ;  a  sovereign  name  in  Greek 
historiography,  152,  153,  176 ; 
Kipling  on,  155;  oratory  in,  181- 
83 ;  Gladstone  and  Jebb  on  the 
speeches  in,  182-83 ;  Demos- 
thenes and,  208 ;  love  a  mere  in- 
cident in,  238 ;  permeates  Virgil, 
284 ;  radical  difference  of  Virgil 
from,  287.  See  also  Iliad  and 
Odyssey 
Horace  on  lyrici  vates,  62n ;  the 
savage  Tenth  Epode  of,  71 ;  the 
spoken  Latin  of  little  use  to,  72 ; 
on  the  comic  poets,  138;  some 
odes  of,  epigrams,  254 ;  on  debt 
to  conquered  Greece,  267,  295 ; 
asserted  dependence  of  Lucilius 
upon  the  Old  Comedy,  268 ;  rep- 
resentative of  Roman  cosmopoli- 
tanism and  Epicureanism,  288 ; 
the  Roman  period  of  his  Epodes 
and  Satires,  288-89 ;  his  Greek 
period  in  his  lyric  poetry,  289 ;  his 
last,  world,  period,  that  of  the 
fourth  book  of  Odes  and  the 
Epistles,  289 ;  always  indepen- 
dently Roman,  289-90 
Hortensius,  Cicero  pitted  against,  292 
Hyperides,  "the  Sheridan  of  antiq- 
uity," 196;  Dionysius  on,  197; 
account  of,  from  treatise  On  Srib- 
limity,  197-98 ;  lacked  the  moral 
force  of  Demosthenes,  198 ;  ex- 
tracts from  Funeral  Oration  for 
Leosthenes  and  his  companions, 
198-99 


Iambic  poetry.  Structure  of,  66,  67, 

68-71 ;      success     of     Archilochus 

with,  69-71 
Ibycus,   a   choral   lyrist,   78-79 ;    the 

passionate  poet  of  love,  82 
Iliad    and    Odyssey,    the    Mycenaean 

lions  of  Greek   Literature,    1 ;    ar- 


chitectonic structure  of  the,  9 ; 
portrayal  of  character  in  the, 
9-10 ;  beauty  of  the  gods  in  the, 
and  the  Homeric  style,  11;  the 
only  mirrors  of  the  poetic  adoles- 
cence of  humanity,  18 ;  in  their 
past  the  Greeks  found  no  earlier 
poetry  than,  34 ;  no  other  poems 
can  rival,  36  ;  pertinence  of, '  to 
life,  39 ;  Matthew  Arnold  on,  46 ; 
materials  for  study  in,  47-48; 
quarry  for  sociologist  and  archaeol- 
ogist, 48;  akin  to  the  "popular" 
and  the  literary  epic,  49-50 ; 
about  half  consists  of  speeches,  53 ; 
authentic  history  to  most  Greeks, 
153 ;  traditional  race-poems  to 
many  now,  153-55 ;  fashioned 
from  epic  poesy,  154 ;  thought  to 
be  the  work  of  a  divine  Homer, 
155.     See    also    Homer 

Individual  lyric,  The,  of  Lesbos  and 
Ionia,  66 ;  second  division  of,  the 
iambic,  68-72 ;  third  division  of, 
the  first  of  the  "melic"  poetry, 
72 

Ion,  genial  jack-of-all-trades,  67,  163 

Isaeus,  184n ;  Demosthenes  influ- 
enced by,  202-3 ;  scholars  must 
know,  207-8 

Isocrates,  habitually  talks  like  a 
book,  15 ;  expects  his  essays  to  be 
read  aloud,  16 ;  intellectual  domi- 
nation of  Hellas  by,  171  ;  on  figures 
in  oratory,  178 ;  lacked  voice  and 
nerve,  178 ;  spent  ten  years  on  his 
Panegyricus,  179,  194 ;  oratory 
begins  with,  181  ;  a  pupil  of  Gor- 
gias,  192;  Jebb  and  Plato  on,  192; 
had  neither  voice  nor  nerve,  193 ; 
opened  a  school  of  rhetoric,  193 ; 
became  a  political  essayist,  193- 
94 ;  advocated  union  of  all  Greeks 
in  the  invasion  of  Persia,  194 ; 
Phiiippus,  194 ;  represents  the 
"smooth"  style  of  Dionysius,  194- 
95 ;  discourses  of,  meant  to  be 
read  aloud,  195 ;  Jebb  on  style  of, 
195,  190;  founder  of  literary  ar- 
tistic prose,  196;  influence  of, 
effected  by  Cicero,  196;  Ho.ssuct  in- 
debted to,  196 ;  deserves  study,  208 


308 


INDEX 


I 


Jason  and  Medea,  The  romance  of, 
intelligible  to  every  modern  reader, 
236 ;  earliest  example  of  romance 
of  modern  type,  245-46 

Jebb,  R.  C,  the  type  of  the  safe  and 
sane  man,  22 ;  on  the  spirit  of 
Periclean  Athens,  97 ;  on  the 
greatness  of  Sophocles,  111 ;  on 
the  speeches  in  Homer,  182-83 ; 
on  the  speeches  in  Thucydides, 
169n,   185;    on  Lysias,   191,  192 

Johnson,  Dr.,  on  questions,  35 ;  on 
the  plajTvright,  137 

K 

Keats,  4 ;  sonnet  book  of,  5 ;  Ode  to 
the  Nightingale,  17 


Latin  Literature,  a  labyrinth  with- 
out kno\dedge  of  Greek,  267 ;  the 
sole  literature  to  the  Dark  Ages, 
268;  a  reflection  of  Greek,  268; 
said  to  begin  with  a  play  of  Livius 
Andronicus,  269 ;  evidences  of 
vigorous  literary  growth  in,  270 ; 
songs  at  banquets,  dirges,  religious 
chants,  and  folk-poetry,  270-71 ; 
the  Fescennine  verses  and  Satura, 
271—72 ;  the  Saturnian  meter, 
272 ;  no  trace  of  Greek  influence 
on,  till  third  century,  273 ;  liter- 
ary elements  of,  distinctly  Roman, 
273 ;  native  Roman,  sank  into 
obscurity,  274 ;  Ennius  aban- 
doned the  Saturnian  measure  for 
the  hexameter,  275-76 ;  Roman 
comedy,  Plautus  and  Terence, 
276-78 ;  Roman  tragedy  almost 
entirely  Greek  in  theme  and  treat- 
ment, 278-79 ;  Lucilius  creates 
satire,  280 ;  pre-Ciceronian  period 
of,  closed,  280 ;  the  Ciceronian 
Age  and  new  influences,  281 ; 
Lucretius,  281-83;  Catullus,  283- 
84;  Vu-gil,  284-88;  the  Aeneid, 
284-85,  286-88;  the  Bucolics, 
285-86 ;  the  Georgics,  286 ;  Horace, 


288-90;  elegiac  poetry,  Tibullus, 
Propertius,  and  Ovid,  290 ;  prose, 
290-95;  Cicero,  291-93;  Caesar, 
293-94;    Sallust,    294-95 

Literature,  Greek,  Power  of,  for  cul- 
ture, 2-3;  architectonic  imagina- 
tion in,  9 ;  the  literary  portrait 
in,  9-10 ;  development  of  literary 
form  in,  13-14  ;  outgrowth  of  the 
national  life,  14-16 ;  realistic, 
16-17 ;  essential  and  abiding 
values  of,  21  ;  Prof.  Bury  on  our 
understanding  of,  23 ;  the  best, 
comes  first,  34,  41 ;  enduring 
value  of  Iliad  and  Odyssey  in  the 
cultural  influences  of,  36,  40-41; 
every  form  of,  confesses  authority 
of  Homer,  41 ;  looks  directly  at 
nature  and  at  man,  51 ;  carefully 
worked  out,  a  characteristic  view 
of,  64 ;  certain  forms  of  \'erse  as- 
sociated with  certain  types  of, 
66 ;  development  of  the  drama, 
and  creation  of  prose  style,  67 ; 
the  elegiac  distich  the  prose  of, 
down  to  the  fifth  century,  68 

Livius  Andronicus,  Saturnian  version 
of  the  Odyssey  by,  14;  "Father  of 
Latin  literature,"  269 ;  brought 
out  a  play  at  Rome,  274 ;  trans- 
lated  the   Odyssey,   274 

Lodge,  Gonzalez,  Greek  influence 
upon  Latin  Literature,  267-96. 
For  analysis  see  Greek  influence,  etc. 

Logographers,  The,  188-89 ;  wrote 
speeches    for    clients,    189 

Longinus  preserved  a  valuable  frag- 
ment of  Sappho,  62 ;  on  Cleitar- 
chus,  174 

Lucian  on  Aristophanes  and  Eupolis, 
139-40 ;     on    Onesicritus,    175 

Lucilius,  Dependence  of,  upon  the 
Old  Comedy,  268;  wrote  thirty 
books  of  satire,  280 ;  made  the 
hexameter  the  vehicle  of  satire 
in  English  and  French,  280 ;  es- 
sentially Roman  in  all  he  wrote, 
280 ;     wrote   elegiac    couplets,    290 

Lucretius,  and  the  philosophic  poets, 
19 ;  proud  of  his  debt  to  Epicurus, 
267  ;  Greek  philosophy  of,  at  work, 
281-83;     and     Virgil,     281;      in- 


4 


I 


I 


INDEX 


309 


tensely  Roman,  he  adopted  Epi- 
cureanism, 281-82;  transmuted 
the  crudities  of  Epicurus  into 
genuine     poetry,     282-83 

Lycurgus,   184n  ;  207-8 

Lyric,  may  be  found  in  Homer,  7, 
41  ;  orderly  development  of,  14  ; 
adaptation  of  the,  to  expression 
of  passionate  individualism,  14; 
material  for  study  of,  18 ;  had  its 
traditional  formulas,  26 

Lyric  poetry  (Edward  Delavan 
Perry)  58-91:  Many-sidedness  of, 
58 ;  permeates  Greek  literature, 
58-59  ;  time's  havoc  with,  59-60  ; 
Bergk's  collection  of,  60 ;  known 
chiefly  by  quotation  in  later 
writers,  60-62 ;  the  preservers  of 
fragments  of,  62 ;  Alexandrian 
canon  of  nine  best  lyric  poets, 
62n  :  term  "lyric"  first  used,  63; 
elegiac  and  melic  included  in,  63  ; 
unintelligible,  except  as  connected 
■with  music,  63-64 ;  essentially 
"occasional"  poetry,  64-65;  clas- 
sification of,  65-66 ;  for  a  single 
voice  or  chorus,  66 ;  why  classified 
according  to  meter,  66 ;  elegiac 
and  iambic  poetry,  66-73 ;  Les- 
bos and  schools  of  poetry,  74 ;  Al- 
caeus  and  Sappho,  75-78 ;  the 
choral  lyrist,  78-90 ;  the  choral 
lyric,  79-80;  Alcman,  80-82; 
Stesichorus  and  Ibycus,  82  ;  Simon- 
ides,  82-84;  Pindar,  84-89;  Bac- 
chylides,  89-90 ;  new  popularity 
for  the  dithyramb,  90 ,  common 
element  of  best  Greek  work,  90-91 

Lysias,  first  among  logographers, 
188 ;  identified  himself  with  his 
client,  189;  ethopoiia  of,  189-90; 
Dionysius  on,  190,  191  ;  gift  of 
stating  a  case,  190-91  ;  lacks 
pathos  and  fire,  grandeur  and 
spirit,  191;  Jebb  on,  191,  192;  Hy- 
perides  mastered  the  graces  of,  197; 
merits  wider  attention,  208 ;  style 
of,  aimed  at,  292 

M 

Magnes,  of  Icaria,  a  comic  poet, 
124-25 


Martial,  Influence  of.  the  Greek  epi- 
gram on,  2.54 

Meleager,  A  love  epigram  of,  253 

Melic  poetry,  included  in  lyric,  63 ; 
twenty-one  kinds  of,  65 ;  the  Les- 
bian and  Ionic,  66 ;  first  division 
of,  72 

Menander,  The  comedy  of  manners 
of,  126-27 ;  the  unapproachable 
master  of  comedy,  148 ;  judg- 
ment of  antiquity  upon,  148-49 ; 
trained  in  philosophy  and  rhet- 
oric, 149;  Quintilian  on,  149-50; 
trained  in  the  drama  by  Alexis, 
150 ;  Croiset  on,  150 ;  the  first 
great  poet  of  Hellenism,  150; 
greatest  representative  of  the  New 
Comedy,  151  ;  a  play  of,  intelli- 
gible to  every  modern  reader,  236 ; 
delicate  delineation  of  character 
by,  255 ;  we  would  rather  lose  all 
of,  and  Plautus  and  Terence, 
than  the  Birds  and  Frogs  of 
Aristophanes,  255 ;  Plautus  drew 
material   from,    276 

Menandrian  comedy.  Sophisticated 
content  of  the,  14 ;  not  evolved 
from     the     Aristophanic,     256 

Middle  Comedy,  The,  134,  136;  ap- 
proaches real  life,  144-45 ;  myth- 
ology in,  145 ;  Aristotle  on,  145 ; 
Antiphanes  on  the  plot  in,  145-46  ; 
renounced  the  political,  146 

Milesian   Talcs,  The,  242 

Milton,  Bias  of  theological  dogma 
in,  40 ;  Homer  the  favorite  book 
of,  45;  and  Homer,  51,  57;  words 
of,  on  the  battle  of  Marston  Moor, 
97;    Lycidas  of,   27,  262 

Mime,  The  Hellenistic,  free  from 
pedantry,  247 ;  the  cruder  phases 
of,  as  recitation  or  song,  256 ;  of 
Theocritus  in  hexameter,  256 ;  of 
Herondas  in  the  iambic  of  Hip- 
ponax,  256 ;  reproduced  scenes 
from  private  life,  257 ;  repellent 
realism  of  Herondas,  257 ;  the  old 
Greek  refinement  and  taste  in 
Theocritus,  257-60;  Battus  and 
Corydon,  258 ;  continuity  of  the 
pastoral  from  Theocritus  to  Spen- 
ser, 258-59 ;    the  legend  of  Daph- 


310 


INDEX 


nis,  259-60;  Bion's  Aphrodito 
and  Adonis,  260-61  ;  extract  from 
Mrs.  Browning's  translation,  261 ; 
modern  imitations  in  Milton's 
Lycidas,  Shelley's  Adonais,  and 
Arnold's  Thyrsis,  262 ;  realism  of 
second  mime  of  Theocritus,  262- 
64 

Mimnermus,  The  love-sick,  senti- 
mentalized in  the  elegiac  measure, 
68 

Murray,  Gilbert,  Translations  of 
Euripides,  12,  15,  23,,  72n ;  on 
progress  among  the  Greeks,  28 ; 
The  Rise  of  the  Greek  Epic,  28n, 
153n,  155 ;  on  high  ideals  in 
Athens,  97 :  translation  of  chorus 
from    the    Bacchae,    121-23 

Musaeus's    Hero   and   Leander,    37 

Mythological  travesty  of  Epichar- 
mus,  131,  134 

Myths,  The,  not  rejected,  156;  con- 
tent of,  questioned,  234 ;  the  old, 
for  centuries  the  subjects  of  epos 
and  tragedy,  237 ;  legends  a  sub- 
stitute for,  237-38 


N 


Nae\nus  wroLe  Roman  plaj's  on 
Roman  subjects,  274-75 ;  impris- 
oned for  criticising  contempo- 
raries, 275 ;  wrote  epic  on  the  First 
Punic  War,  275 

Nature,  in  Homer,  51-52;  man's 
power  over,  theme  of  the  great 
chorus  in  the  Antigone,  97;  in  the 
early  Greek  philosophy,  211  ;  love 
and  hate  the  architects  of,  for 
Empedocles,  213-14;  fertile  con- 
ceptions about  the  order  of,  214 ; 
Aristotle's  philosophy  a  philosophy 
of,  226-27 

New  Comedy,  The,  134,  136 ;  use  of 
chorus  in,  142-43 ;  men  and 
women  of  the,  144 ;  poets  of  the, 
dropped  mythological  subjects, 
146 ;  portrayed  average  charac- 
ters, 147 ;  the  passion  of  love  in, 
147-48 ;  difference  between  the, 
and  the  modern  romance,  148 ; 
reached  its    highest    point  in  Me- 


nander  148,  150-51 ;  realistic,  254 ; 
forecasts  modern  five-act  play, 
255 ;  repulsive  side  of,  not  a  re- 
production of  contemporary  Greek 
life,  255 ;  a  regeneration  of  the 
comedy  of  manners,  256 ;  Plautus 
and  Terence  used  the  material  of 
the,  276-78 
Nicander,  The  Georgics  and  Meta- 
morphoses of,  the  background  of 
Virgil's    and    Ovid's,    248 


O 


Odysseus,  The  stories  of  Achilles  and, 
absorbed  the  earlier  hymns  and 
songs,  34;  the  homecoming  of,  a 
center  of  lost  epics,  36 ;  the  main- 
spring of  the  Odyssey,  52-53 ; 
prayer  of,  for  Nausicaa,  55;  153; 
eloquence  of,  181  ;  on  the  gifts  of 
the  gods,  181-82;  plea  of  the 
outcast,    to    Nausicaa,    182 

Odyssey,  the,  Saturnian  version  of, 
by  Livius  Andronicus,  14 ;  a  con- 
flation of  two  "  Returns"  of  the 
hero,  35 ;  the  forty-one  days  of, 
36  ;  Petrarch's  copy  of  Latin  trans- 
lation of,  43;  Butcher  and  Lang's 
translation  of  the,  45n ;  Odj'sseus 
the  mainspring  of  the,  52-53: 
excels  in  picturesque  effect,  53 ; 
translation  of,  bj'  Livius  Androni- 
cus, a   school-book  at   Rome,  274 

Old  Comedy,  Political  satire  and 
personal  lampooning  in  the,  134, 
135;  free  speech  as  the  breath  of 
life  to  the,  136;  poets  of  the,  gave 
the  people  their  own,  137;  this 
not  the  traditional  view  of  the, 
138;  interpretations  of,  139-40 
changes  in  the,  142-43;  Aristotle 
on  the,  144;  portrayed  the  ridicu- 
lous, 146 

Oratory  (Charles  Fohster  Smith) 
178-208 :  Delight  of  the  Greeks  in, 
178 ;  the  orator's  sense  of  beauty 
and  infinite  painstaking,  178-79 ; 
the  Attic  Demos  the  audience, 
179-80 ;  as  a  fine  art  begins  with 
Gorgias  and  Isocrates,  181 ;  in 
Homer,     181-83;      Solon     in     the 


INDEX 


311 


Agora,  183 :  Gorgias  of  Leontini, 
183-84 ;  Antiphon,  the  first  name 
in  the  Canon,  184 ;  the  speeches 
in  Thucydidcs,  184-85,  186-88; 
Dionysius's  three  styles  of  composi- 
tion, 185-86;  the  "austere,"  186; 
the  logographer,  Lysias,  188-92; 
Isocrates,  192-96 ;  represents  and 
illustrates  the  "smooth"  style, 
194-95  ;  Hyperides,  196-99  ;  Aeschi- 
nes,  199-201  ;  Demosthenes,  202-7  ; 
legacy  of,  toman  of  culture,  207-8  ; 
Lysias,  Isocrates,  and  Demosthenes, 
208 

Oratory,  Orderly  development 
through,  14;  Greek,  essentially  At- 
tic, 58;  Greek  teachers  of  rhetoric 
at  Rome,  291;  Hortensius  and 
Cicero,  292-93 

Ovid,  on  Menander,  147;  love- 
elegies  of,  expansions  of  epigrams, 
254;  fixed  the  sphere  of  the  elegiac 
couplet,  290 


Pacuvius   used    Greek    subjects   and 

treatment  in  his  tragedies,  278-79 
Paean,  The,  a  song  of  thanksgiving 

or  praise,  65 
Palatine  Anthology,  Epigrams  of,  2 
Panaetius  on  the  principle  in  speeches 

of  Demosthenes,  206 
Papyri      discovered      in      Egyptian 

tombs,  60 ;    slowly  filling  the  gaps 

in  Hellenistic  literature,  230 
Parmenides    and     Empedocles,    The 

philosophic  epic  of,  36 
Pericles,     burlesqued     by     Cratinus, 

134;     gave   the   people   their  own, 

136-37;    the  Athenian  democracy 

under,  165 
Peripeteia,  110 
Perkin,  Bernadotte,  History,  152- 

77.     For  analysis  see  History 
Perry,     Edward     Delavan,    Lyric 

poetry,    58-91.      For   analysis   see 

Lyric  poetry 
Persephone,   Hymns   to,    32;    queen 

of  the  dead,  88 
Philip,    Duel    of    Demosthenes    and, 

20;      father     of     Alexander,     172; 

Demosthenes    and,     205-7;      con- 


verted city-states  into  a  monarchy, 
232 
Philistus,  historian  of  Sicily,  171 
Philosophy  (Frederick  J.  E.  Wood- 
bridge)  209-28 :  Greeks  origi- 
nators of,  for  the  Western  world, 
209;  Thales  of  Miletus  their  first 
philosopher,  209 ;  his  achieve- 
ments, 210;  two  dominant  in- 
terests :  The  order  of  nature  and 
the  excellence  of  man,  211;  the 
cosmos,  211;  Parmenides,  being, 
and  the  infinite,  211-12;  Anaxi- 
mander,  space,  and  the  struggle  for 
life,  212-13  ;  Anaximenes  and  the 
cosmic  wind,  213  ;  Heraclitus  and 
fire  everlasting,  213;  Empedocles 
with  love  and  hate,  213 ;  Anax- 
agoras  and  intelligence,  213-14; 
Democritus  and  his  atomic  theory, 
214 ;  Greek  cosmologies  as  pic- 
tures painted  by  tradition,  214-15; 
nature  recovered  later  through  a 
bitter  struggle,  215 ;  Attic  phi- 
losophy humanistic,  city-born  and 
city-bred,  215-16;  Protagoras, 
the  Sophist,  the  first  professional 
educator,  216;  Socrates  and  his 
love  for  young  men,  217-18  ;  Plato 
and  his  contributions  to,  218-19; 
the  Republic,  219-21 ;  story  of  Er, 
220 ;  Plato's  challenge  to  civili- 
zation, 221  ;  his  theory  of  educa- 
tion, 222;  Aristotle,  223-27;  sys- 
tem of  sciences  in,  224 ;  his 
Metaphysics,  224-26  ;  a  philosophy 
of  nature,  226-27 ;  no  greater 
philosophical  conceptions,  228 ; 
constructs  the  ideal  wise  man,  233 
Pindar,  one  of  the  world's  supreme 
poets,  4;  Landor  on,  7;  long 
communion  with,  impairs  appre- 
ciation of  some  modern  poems,  17  ; 
the  highest  reaches  of  song  in,  18; 
Homer  beyond,  38;  MS.  of,  come 
down  to  us,  60 ;  Epinikion  of,  65 ; 
a  choral  lyrist,  78;  agitated 
rhythms  in,  79 ;  epinician  odes  of, 
84-89;  the  Fourth  Pythian,  85; 
principle  of  composition,  85-86 ; 
abstract  of  the  Seventh  Olympian, 
86-88 ;     magnificence    of    diction, 


312 


INDEX 


88;  Fourteenth  Olympian,  88; 
dithyramb  to  Athens,  89 ;  un- 
critical depreciation  of,  89 ;  in- 
fluence of,  on  Thucydides,  187; 
Demosthenes  and,  208 

Plato,  denounced  by  Nietzsche  and 
Landor,  5 ;  called  Homer  origina- 
tor of  the  drama,  7  ;  labyrinthine 
construction  of  Dialogues  of,  9 ; 
Jowett's  introduction  to  Phaedrus 
of,  11 ;  and  the  Sophists,  11  ;  a 
representative  and  destroyer  of 
Hellenism,  13 ;  the  source  of  dia- 
lectical scholasticism  and  mystic 
symbolism,  13 ;  l:)asis  of  education 
of,  14 ;  definition  of  theme  of 
Greek  poetry,  17  ;  the  Dialogues 
of,  the  only  adequate  expression 
of  the  potency  of  discussions,  20 ; 
an  exception,  29n  ;  purified  spirits 
in  the  stars,  30 ;  attack  of,  on 
Homer,  39  ;  epigrams  ascribed  to, 
67 ;  the  Symposium  of,  73 ;  on 
Epicharmus,  130 ;  epigram  on 
Aristophanes,  142 ;  care  of,  in 
composition,  179 ;  Demosthenes 
and,  208 ;  real  name  of,  Aristocles, 
218;  why  dubbed  Plato,  218; 
Socrates  and  his  followers  a  dra- 
matic spectacle  to,  218;  com- 
mitted to  the  dramatization  of  the 
conflict  of  ideas,  219 ;  versatility 
of,  219;  the  Republic  of,  219-21; 
a  challenge  to  civilization,  221 ; 
ideas   of,   on   education,   222-23 

Plautus,  Plays  of,  adaptations  from 
Hellenistic  comedies,  255 ;  bor- 
rowed from  Menander,  276 ;  in- 
troduced purely  Roman  elements 
and  characteristics,  277 ;  con- 
versational   and    rugged,    278 

Plutarch  preserved  some  lyrical  frag- 
ments, G2  ;  opinion  of  Cratippus, 
171  ;      on    Demosthenes,     179 

Poetry,  Greek,  The  theme  of,  the 
imitation  of  human  action,  17 ; 
no  "publication"  of,  63-64 

Poetry,  Greek  and  modern.  Imagina- 
tive and  emotional  contrasts  be- 
tween, 23-33  ;  the  modern  spirit, 
24 ;  complication  and  range  of 
modern,  25-27  ;   refined  by  literary 


reminiscence,  26 ;  variety  of  re- 
source in  modern,  26-28 ;  artistic 
unity  in  Greek,  27  ;  divines  more 
of  the  future  than  the  Greek,  28 ; 
wail  for  the  impotence  of  man  in 
Greek,  29 ;  Greek  poetry  an  in- 
comparable educational  instrument, 
33  ;  Aristotle  on,  64n 

Poly  bins,  moved  to  his  great  work, 
152,  176 ;  a  study  of  great  per- 
sonalities, 233  ;  a  sane  observer,  241 

Posidonius,  Influence  of,  on  the 
Latin,  240 

Prescott,  Henry  W.,  Hellenistic 
Literature,  229-66.  For  analysis 
see  Hellenistic  Literature 

Prometheus,  Reconciliation  between 
Zeus  and,  102  ;  suffers  for  his  love 
of  man,  104 

Propertius  on  the  Aeneid,  42 ;  love- 
elegies  of,  expansions  of  epigrams, 
254  ;  boasted  he  was  the  Roman 
Callimachus,  267  ;  fixed  the  sphere 
of  the   elegiac   couplet,   290 

Prose,  Artistic,  of  late  date,  67 

Prose,  The  crisp,  of  the  Hellenistic 
period,  239  ;  scanty  remains  of,  240 

Prose,    see   Latin   prose 

Protagoras  the  Sophist  on  man,  216; 
the  first  professional  educator,  216  ; 
danger  in  the  methods  of,  217 

Q 

Quintilian  refers  to  nine  lyric  poets, 
62n ;  on  the  study  of  Menander 
by  the  would-be  orator,  149-50 ; 
claimed  Satire  was  wholly  Roman, 
267-68 

R 

Realism,  The,  of  Greek  literature, 
16-17  ;  interest  in,  233  ;  traces  of, 
in  life  and  thought  of  fifth  century, 
234  ;  characteristic  of  the  Hellen- 
istic period,  235 

Religion,  Questions  of,  in  men's 
thoughts,  96 ;  faith  in,  under- 
mined, 234-35 

Rhetoric,  dialectical.  The  world  of, 
4;  swallowed  all,  11  ;  an  important 
element   in    education,    239 


INDEX 


313 


Rhetoric  of  Western  Europe,  Source 
of  the.  20 

Rhetorical  fluency,  an  abiding  endow- 
ment, 4 

Rhetorical  prose,  a  new  literary  form, 
171-72 

Romans,  Rude  style  and  culture  of 
the  early,  13 ;  acknowledged  their 
indebtedness  to  Greece,  267  ;  ban- 
quet and  festival  songs,  and  dirges 
of  the,  270-71  ;  folk-poetry  of, 
271  ;  epitaphs  from  the  third  cen- 
tury, 271-72;  contact  of,  with  the 
Greeks,  273;  imprisoned  Naevius 
for  criticism  of  his  contempo- 
raries, 275  ;  comedy  popular  with 
the,  276-77 ;  tragedy  never  popu- 
lar among  the,  279 ;  cease  to  be 
Italian  and  become  cosmopolitan, 
281  ;  heirs  to  only  one  foreign 
literature,  285 

Rome,  the  first  station  in  Homer's 
progress  to  the  modern  world,  41 

Rome,  The  beginnings  of,  269  ;  com- 
pared with  Sparta,  270 ;  career  of 
conquest  and  expansion  of,  272-73  ; 
association  of,  with  Greece,  begun, 
273 ;  political  intimacy  of,  with 
the  Italian  Greeks,  273 ;  made 
Greek  literature  her  handmaid,  295 

Ruskin  on  melancholy  in  the  Greeks, 
29 

S 

Sallust,  aimed  to  be  the  Roman 
Thucydides,  294 ;  familiar  with 
early  Roman  literature,  294-95 ; 
style  of,  peculiarly  Latin,  295 ; 
on  the  Roman  character,  295 

Sappho,  one  of  the  world's  supremo 
poets,  4 ;  the  actual  cadences  of, 
18 ;  MSS.  of,  burned  at  Rome,  60  ; 
fragments  of,  preserved  in  papyri, 
GO ;  two  best  pieces  of,  62 ;  prob- 
ably no  two  copies  of  text  of,  alike, 
64;  use  of  the  "individual  lyric" 
by,  66  ;  Swinburne's  imitations  of, 
71 ;  Wharton's  edition  of,  71  ;  criti- 
cism of  poetry  of,  76-77;  its  tran- 
scendent beauty,  77-78 ;  defense 
of,  78 ;  tone  of  pure  folk-poetry 
in,  93 ;   love  poetry  of,  233.  238 


Satire,  suggested  in  Homer,  7 ; 
claimed  by  Quintilian  to  be  wholly 
Roman,  267-68 ;  established  in 
the   work   of   Lucilius,    280 

Satura,  The,  dance-songs,  271 ;  re- 
appear in  a  different  form  in  the 
work    of    Lucilius,    280 

Saturnian  meter,  The  one  national 
Roman,  272 ;  abandoned  by  En- 
nius    for    the   hexameter,    275 

Seneca  refers  to  nine  lyric  poets, 
62n ;    cultivated  a  crisp  style,  239 

Seneca,  the  younger.  Nothing  Roman 
in  the  nine  tragedies  of,   279 

Shakespeare,  4 ;  quality  of  univer- 
sality in,  93  ;  freedom  of,  in  choice 
of  subjects,  99 

Shelley,  4,  28 ;  the  formless  and 
aimless  Revolt  of  Islam  of,  9 ;  on 
Homer  as  a  poet,  46 ;  AdoTmis  of, 
on  death  of  Keats,  262 

Shelley's  Ode  to  the  West  Wind,  No 
Greek   poem   to   match,    17 

Shorey,  Paul,  The  study  of  Greek 
literature,  1-33 ;  on  Sappho,  76. 
See  Study  of  Greek  Literature 

Simonides,  From  Pindar  to,  4 ;  at- 
tacks on,  by  Timocroon,  61 ;  first 
poet  of  the  choral  lyric  to  use  the 
elegiac  distich,  66 ;  a  choral  lyrist, 
78-79 ;  popularity  and  versatility 
of,  82-83  ;  lines  of,  on  Danae  and 
Perseus,  83,  Enkonnon  of,  on  the 
dead  at  TherniDpylac,  83-84; 
story  of  Enkomion  by,  for  Scopas, 
85 ;    the  Danae  of,  208 

Smith,  Charles  Forster,  Oratory, 
178-208.  For  analyses  .see  Ora- 
tory  and  names  of   orators 

Smyth,  Herbert  Weir,  Epic  poetry, 
34-57.   For  analysis  see  Epic  poetry 

Sociologist,    The,    and    Homer,   48 

Socrates,  denounced  by  Nietzsche 
and  Landor,  5;  the  Platonic,  11; 
influence  of,  in  fifth  century,  96; 
affection  of,  for  young  men,  217; 
method  of  instruction  of,  2I7-1S; 
the  loss  of,  218;  prayer  of,  in  the 
Phaedrus    of    Plato,    228 

Solon,  Many  manifestoes  of,  in  the 
elegiac  measure,  6S;  elegj' of,  on 
retaking  Salamis,  183 


314 


INDEX 


Sophists,  the,  Plato  protested  against, 
11;  at  Athens,  96;  prosperity  of, 
216  ;  significance  of  their  existence, 
217 

Sophocles,  From  Aeschylus  to,  4 ; 
from,  to  Euripides,  4 ;  pure  clas- 
sicism of,  11;  the  touchstone  of 
our  appreciation  of  classic  beauty, 
11-12;  the  true  Hellenic  beauty 
of,  12 ;  long  communion  with, 
impairs  appreciation  of  some  mod- 
ern poems,  17 ;  time  for  apprecia- 
tion of,  must  not  be  wasted,  18 ; 
poetic  personification  in,  22;  Homer 
above,  38 ;  quality  of  universality 
and  magic  of  phrase  in,  93  ;  sounds 
the  depths  of  life,  98  ;  facts  about, 
109-10 ;  keenly  artistic  and  typi- 
cally Athenian,  110;  portrayed 
human  character,  110;  solved  a 
difficult  problem.  111;  power  of, 
in  portrayal  of  changing  feeling, 
111;  in  delineation  of  feminine 
character,  in  Antigone  and  Deia- 
neira,  112;  his  Theseus  and 
Neoptolemus,  112-13;  change  in 
construction  of  plot  in  Oedipus 
Tyrannus,  113;  the  choral  work 
of  rare  beauty,  113;  on  his  style, 
113n;  skill  and  delicacy  of,  in  use 
of  language,  114;  always  con- 
scious of  a  divine  order,  114-15; 
love   a   mere  incident  in,   238 

Sophron  cultivated  the  mime  in 
prose,  259 

Sparta,  School  of  music  and  poetry 
at,  74 ;  the  Mecca  of  poets  and 
musicians,  80 ;  Alcman  buried  at, 
81 

Stesichorus,  a  choral  lyrist,  78-79; 
poems  of,  used  as  school  texts  in 
Roman  times,  82 

Stesimbrotus    of    Thasos,    163 

Strabo  on  Eratosthenes,  39 ;  pre- 
served some    lyrical  fragments,  62 

Study,  The,  of  Greek  literature  (Paul 
Shorey)  1-33  :  The  central  sun,  1 ; 
appalling  range  of  accessory 
studies,  1-2 ;  longest  unbroken 
literary  tradition,  2 ;  distorted 
perspective  of  the  specialist,  2 ; 
Homer    the    beginning,    3 ;     from 


poetic  creation  to  dialectical  rhet- 
oric, 3-5;  the  one  poetry  that  is 
classic,  5 ;  the  Homeric  fire  and 
lucidity,  5-7  ;  drama,  lyric,  elegy, 
and  choral  hymn  begin  in  Homer, 
7-8;  architectonic  structure  of  the 
Iliad  and  Odyssey,  9 ;  portrayal 
of  character  in,  9-10 ;  intellec- 
tualism  of  the  Greek,  10-11 ;  lost 
in  a  literary  waste,  1 1 ;  Sophocles 
reached  the  culmination  of  true 
Hellenic  beauty,  11-12;  Euripides 
and  Plato  representatives  and 
destroyers  of  the  sequent  Hellen- 
ism, 13 ;  sequence  and  develop- 
ment of  each  literary  form,  13-14  ; 
the  spontaneous  outgrowth  of  the 
national  life,  14-16 ;  colloquial- 
ism and  idiom  interwoven  in  Greek 
style,  15 ;  predominance  of  the 
spoken  over  the  written  word,  16 ; 
Greek  literature  realistic,  16-17 ; 
Greek  poetry  springs  out  of  life, 
17 ;  education  and  culture  must 
select  the  facts  of  enduring  value 
in  history  and  literature,  18;  out- 
come of  his  athletics  for  the  Greek, 
19  ;  the  thrill  of  spiritual  intoxica- 
tion in  the  pre-Socratic  philosophic 
poets,  19  ;  Greek  drama  the  source 
of  all  the  rest,  19  ;  Herodotus  and 
Thucydides,  19-20  ;  the  Dialogues 
of  Plato,  20 ;  Demosthenes's  Ora- 
tion on  the  Crown,  20;  Aristotle, 
21 ;  attitude  of  mind  in  which  to 
approach  the  study,  21 ;  not  by 
undiscriminating  erudition,  21 ; 
nor  by  the  falsifying  ingenuity  of 
modern  research,  21  ;  the  unity  of 
literature,  from  Homer  to  Tenny- 
son, 22-23  ;  Professor  Bury  on  the 
anima  naturaliter  pagana,  23 ;  the 
larger  inclusive  intelligence,  23 ; 
the  modern  spirit,  24-25 ;  a  gath- 
ering of  modern  savants  and  a 
body  of  cultivated  Greeks,  24-25 ; 
the  complication  and  range  of 
modern  poetry,  25-33 ;  literary 
reminiscence  in,  26-28 ;  visions  of 
the  future,  28-29  ;  distinctive  mel- 
ancholy of,  29-31  ;  lack  of  strength 
to  enter  upon  our  inheritance,  31— 


INDEX 


315 


32 ;  Greek  poetry  an  incomparable 

educational    instrument,   33.      .See 

also  Literature,  Greek 
Susarion,  of  Megara,  organized  first 

comic  chorus  at  Icaria,   124,  125 
Swinburne's    imitations    of    Sappho, 

71 

T 

Terence,  Plays  of,  adaptations  of 
Hellenistic  comedies,  255,  277-78 ; 
refined  and  polished,  with  a  pure 
and  clear  style,  278 ;  Eunuchus  of, 
well  received,  278 

Terpander,  of  Lesbos,  established 
school  at  Sparta,  74 

Thales  of  Miletus,  first  who  looked 
for  the  beginnings  of  things,  209; 
achievements  attributed  to,  210 ; 
typical  of  half  of  Greek  philosophy, 
211 

Themistocles,  The  career  of,  de- 
scribed by  Thucydides,  169 ;  attacks 
on,  by  Timocreon,  61 ;  "a  speaker 
of  words,"  183 

Theocritus,  Tone  of  pure  folk-poetry 
in,  93,  121  ;  the  Syracusan  idyl  of, 
intelligible  to  every  modern  reader, 
236 ;  epigram  of,  on  the  reader  of 
character,  252-53,  254 ;  recurrence 
of  the  old  Greek  refinement  in, 
257 ;  pastoral  legends,  258-60 ; 
Battus  and  Corydon,  258 ;  the 
pastoral  from,  to  Spenser,  258-59 ; 
handling  of  legendary  material, 
Daphnis,  259-60 ;  life  of  the  city 
in  his  second  mime,  262-64 ; 
travels  and  other  work  of,  265 ; 
estimate  of,  265  ;  translations  of, 
265n ;     realism   in,    285 

Theognis  of  Megara,  MS.  of,  come 
down  to  us,  60 ;  elegiac  verses 
assigned  to,  a  literary  puzzle,  73 

Theopompus  of  Chios,  a  crabbed 
Herodotus,  172 

Thermopylae,  Enkomion  of  Simon- 
ides  on  the  dead  at,  83-84 

Thespis,  of  Icaria,  gave  the  first 
tragic  performance  at  Athens,  124 

Thucydides,  Style  of,  15;  value  of 
the  story  of  the  Peloponnesian 
War,  20 ;   a  canonical  name,  152 ; 


desire  to  inform  and  to  please  in, 
153 ;  and  the  heroic  age,  156 ; 
devoted  to  fact  more  than  to  form 
157,  171  ;  on  the  general  feeling 
against  the  Athenians,  159 ;  des- 
pised Homer,  161  ;  founder  of 
historical  science,  162  ;  first  teacher 
of  the  art  of  writing  history,  163 ; 
Edward  Meyer  on,  163 ;  on  his 
own  work  and  purpose,  163-64 ; 
the  man,  163-64 ;  his  work  in- 
complete, 165  ;  his  three  manners, 
165 ;  his  detachment,  165 ;  the 
philosophic  manner,  166-67 ;  the 
annalistic  manner  an  advance  upon 
Hellanicus,  167-68 ;  the  episodic 
manner,  168-69 ;  Macaulay  on, 
168 ;  digression  in,  a  rare  jewel 
in  a  severe  setting,  169;  story  of 
Themistocles,  169 ;  the  speeches 
in,  169-70 ;  Professor  Bury  on,  163, 
170,  177;  task  of,  completed  by 
Xenophon,  170-71 ;  a  pupil  of 
Antiphon,  184 ;  the  speeches  in, 
184-88;  principles  of  their  com- 
position, 185;  Jebb  on,  185; 
Dionysius  on  their  style  of  com- 
position, 186 ;  literary  dialect  in 
the  speeches,  187-88;  influence 
of  Gorgias  on,  187 ;  appeal  of  the 
Plataeans,  and  Funeral  Oration  of 
Pericles,  188;  Demosthenes  and, 
208 ;  influence  of,  extended  by 
Sallust,  294 

Tibullus,  Love-elegies  of,  expansions 
of  epigrams,  254  ;  fixed  the  sphere 
of  the  elegiac  couplet,  290 

Timaeus  of  Tauromenium,  152,   176 

Timocreon  of  Rhodes,  First  lines  of 
lyric  by,  61 

Timotheus,  MS.  of,  come  down  to  us, 
60 ;    a  dithyramb  of,  65 

Titan,   The,   in  Prometheus,   102-4 

Tlepolemos,  The  story  of,  in  Seventh 
Olympian,  87-88 

Tragedy  (James  Rign.\ll  Wheeler) 
92-123:  Wide  range  of  the  sub- 
ject, 92 ;  not  traced  in  its  becom- 
ing, but  in  its  completeness,  92 ; 
the  poet  must  draw  his  inspiration 
from  life,  93  ;  must  have  the  <|Uiil- 
ity  of  universality,  93 ;    be  typi<al 


316 


INDEX 


of  the  thought  of  humanity,  94 ; 
the  age  of  the  great  tragic  poets 
the  Attic  period  of  Greek  intellec- 
tual life,  94 ;  the  atmosphere  of 
political  struggle,  94 ;  the  strug- 
gles of  the  Persian  Wars,  95 ; 
drama,  the  most  distinctive  form 
of  poetry,  95 ;  history,  oratory, 
and  philosophy,  most  active,  95 ; 
demand  for  higher  education,  96; 
painting,  sculpture,  and  architec- 
ture, at  their  best,  96 ;  questions 
of  religion  in  men's  thoughts,  96 ; 
Euripides  the  poet  of  this  revolt, 
96-97 ;  the  spirit  of  Periclean 
Athens,  97 ;  Aeschylus,  Sophocles 
and  Euripides,  the  great  poetic 
interpreters  of  thought,  97  ;  types 
of  humanity  to-day  as  then,  98 ; 
the  imagination  of  Aeschylus,  98 ; 
the  man  of  the  world,  Sophocles, 
98 ;  the  humanity  of  Euripides, 
98 ;  the  human  tendencies  of  this 
trial,  99 ;  distinctive  qualities  of 
Greek  tragedy,  99 ;  traditional 
and  national  character  of  its  sub- 
ject-matter, 99 ;  markedly  repre- 
sentative of  the  Greek  mind,  99  ; 
idealization  of  characters  in,  100; 
a  drama  of  ideas,  interpreting  life 
through  character,  100;  Aristotle 
on,  lOOn ;  facts  in  the  life  of  Aes- 
chylus, 101;  seven  plays  only  of, 
preserved,  101  ;  general  plan  of 
the  trilogies  of  Prometheus  and 
Orestes,  102-8 ;  the  Prometheus, 
102-4 ;  quotations  from  other 
plays  on  Zeus,  104-5  ;  the  Oresteia, 
105-9  ;  Sophocles,  109-15  ;  Eurip- 
ides, 115-23.  .See  also  Aeschy- 
lus,   Euripides,   Sophocles 

Tragedy,  Hellenistic,  clung  to  the 
myths  of  the  classical  drama,   265 

Tragedy,  Influence  of,  on  comedy,  127 

Tragic  poetry.  Relation  of,  to  the 
epic  and  lyric,  92  ;  one  who  reads 
much,  forms  a  standard,  93  ;  must 
have  the  quality  of  universality,  93 

Troy,  The  lost  epics  of  the  tale  of,  36  ; 
the  Taking  of  Ilium,  37  ;  ruins  of,  154 

Tyrtaeus,  The  patriotic  exhortations 
of,  made  in  the  elegiac  measure,  68 


i 


V 


Virgil,  Cowley  on,  9 ;  the  Homer  of 
the  Latin  race,  41-42 ;  literary 
larcenies  of,  catalogued,  41,  268; 
aim  of,  to  enfranchise  Homer  in 
Latin  speech,  42 ;  controversy 
over  relative  merits  of  Homer  and, 
42-43 ;  preeminent  as  the  poet  of 
Italy,  42 ;  lost  his  preeminence 
except  in  France,  44 ;  and  Homer, 
51,  57,  268;  the  hero  of,  52,  54; 
acknowledged  his  debt  to  Theoc- 
ritus and  Hesiod,  267 ;  Lucre- 
tius and,  281 ;  remarkable 
development  of,  284 ;  from  Al- 
exandrian back  through  Hesiod 
to  Homer,  284 ;  the  Acneid  the 
embodiment  of  the  spirit  of  Rome, 
284;  the  Bucolics  inspired  by  the 
Eclogues  of  Theocritus,  285;  ar- 
tificiality in,  285-86  ;  the  Georgics 
inspired  by  Hesiod,  284,  286 ; 
authoritative  and  of  poetic  beauty, 
286 ;  the  Aeneid  essentially  Ho- 
meric, yet  radically  different,  287 ; 
Aeneas  modeled  upon  Virgil 
himself,  287-88;  Dido  one  of  the 
great  women  in  literature,  288 ; 
never  ceased  to  be  a  Roman,  296 


W 


Wheeler,  James  Rignall,  Tragedy, 
92-123.     For  analysis  see  Tragedy 

WOODBRIDGE,         FREDERICK       J.       E., 

Philosophy,    209-28.     For    analy- 
sis see  Philosophy 


Xanthus  the  Lydian  and  his  story 
of  the  all-conquering  folk,  156,  157 

Xenophanes  philosophized  in  elegiac 
verse,  68 ;  sym.potic  poem  of,  73 

Xenophon,  a  canonical  name,  152 ; 
the  desire  to  inform  and  to  please 
in,  153  ;  task  of  Thucydides  com- 
pleted by,  170;  Grote  on,  170; 
a  partisan  of  Sparta,  170 ;  an  agree- 
able dilettante,  171 

C :    Alex.  Nelson 


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